The Importance (And Winners) Of The ACC Tournament

Barry breaks it down for us and who has succeeded over the years

Whether it’s the number of participants or the venue selected, the structure of the event or its place in the universe of league achievement, some people always find a reason to denigrate the ACC Tournament.

In its early years the tournament was played at Reynolds Coliseum, largest arena in the Southeast and den of NC State’s Everett Case, alias the Old Gray Fox. Fans from other North Carolina schools could snap up tickets, flooding the stands once contestants were eliminated, to mount a rooting force against teams from beyond the state. A mere three squads from outside North Carolina secured ACC titles in the tournament’s first 30 years – Maryland in 1958, South Carolina in 1971, and UVa in 1976.

Most early coaches (except Case) protested recognizing the tournament winner as the ACC champion and automatic NCAA representative rather the team that survived the grind of several months of league games. Some observers remain confused over this competitive hierarchy today.

Playing a tournament just prior to commencing NCAA competition supposedly drained ACC teams, with no NCAA champions produced by the league for 17 years (1957 to 1974).

With only 7 teams in the league for most of the 1970s following the pouty withdrawal of South Carolina, led by Frank McGuire and football’s Paul Dietzel, the top regular-season finisher needed just two games to reach the final.

With 9 schools in the league after adding Florida State, a single elimination game — good-naturedly dubbed the Les Robinson Invitational after the beleaguered NC State coach — opened the tournament for more than a decade (1992-2004).

More recently former UNC player and assistant coach Roy Williams arrived from Kansas and the Big 12 in 2004 and, meeting a measure of popular approval, described the ACC Tournament at Greensboro as a big cocktail party. By 2021, and with as many ACC as NCAA titles (3), a more circumspect Williams said, perhaps facetiously: “Our seven freshmen have never experienced anything like the ACC Tournament...I mean, it’s one of the greatest sports events ever.”

By 2017 the tournament included 14 contests, an echo of the sprawling 17-member Southern Conference from which the SEC and later the ACC derived. The ACC adopted a single-elimination postseason tournament upon its 1953-54 formation as a way to generate revenue and interest; eventually every NCAA conference had a similar postseason event.

These days the ACC Tournament is widely derided as a vestige of the past. Next season the internal faceoff is expected to remain at the current 14 games, with the 18-member league’s three lowest finishers sitting out the competition.

Consequently, new members Cal and Stanford (struggling on the court for years in men’s basketball) and SMU will be in danger of missing an event unusual in its unifying influence, a factor few take into account. No amount of logo redesigns, banquets, revenue sharing, marketing slogans, “legendary” players who never competed in the ACC, sponsor swag, or administrator confabs can replace having teams and players build connections by meeting on the court when the stakes are meaningful and much of the basketball world is watching.