By Jerry Ratcliffe, The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, Va.
Jan. 12--The ACC ain't what it used to be.
To borrow a line from Lou Holtz during Monday night's BCS championship game, I used the word ain't, not as a reference to my education, but rather as a point of emphasis.
No, ACC basketball ain't what it used to be. The question is, Why?
If you grew up an ACC basketball fan, you have to be disappointed to pick up your morning paper and notice the absence of the league's teams from the Top 25 rankings. Currently, there's only one -- No. 1 Duke -- in the entire top 25.
One former ACC coach asked me the other day when was the last time there was only one ACC team in the national rankings, so I did some research and discovered that you have to go all the way back to the 1977-78 season to find an Associated Press Top 25 poll without more than one ACC team ranked in a single week.
That's more than three decades with more than one ACC basketball team ranked in the top 25 every week of every season.
Personally, I've never seen the ACC this down.
For three of the past five seasons, only half or less of the league's teams have received NCAA tournament invitations, with only four bids extended in 2008 and 2006.
This season, ACC teams have taken some brutal hits from nonconference teams that have no business beating teams from this league: Kennesaw State 80, Georgia Tech 63; Central Florida 84, Miami 78; Norfolk State 50, Virginia 49; UNLV 71, Virginia Tech 59; Presbyterian 66, Wake Forest 64.
So, what's up with the league? There's plenty of theories such as the Big East's emergence has taken away recruits from the northeast that used to go to the ACC, or that it's just cyclical and the ACC will be back after it rebuilds, to the fact that it's no longer a four-year league or even a three-year league but rather a one- or two-year league, meaning the best players only hang around for a season or two.
Well, here's my theory. Having been weaned on ACC hoops and having had the good fortune to have covered the league for most of my adult life, I have come to a conclusion.
While serving as a guest on the North Carolina radio network's pre-game show with host Jones Angell prior to the UVa vs. UNC game last Saturday, Jones posed the question as to why the ACC was struggling.
I have been thinking about this for a few weeks now and here's my theory.
Coaches.
For decades, the ACC was known as a coaches league, perhaps THE coaches league in the entire nation. Every ACC game was like basketball's version of war. Walk into another coach's arena and you better have your act together, better have your game face on, better be prepared or you'd be cut to ribbons.
The caricature accompanying today's column is something I picked up on Tobacco Road back in the old days, but it illustrates my point.
There are seven coaches in the poster from the late '70s:
Virginia's Terry Holland (ask Dan Bonner what he thinks of the Big Whistle); North Carolina's Dean Smith; Maryland's Lefty Driesell; N.C. State's Stormin' Norman Sloan; Duke's Bill Foster; Clemson's Bill Foster (known as Tiger Bill to avoid the confusion); and Wake Forest's Carl Tacy.
That's a pretty fair lineup of coaches. Consider that six of them still rank among the ACC's top 20 in terms of career victories during years coached only in the league. The only one missing from that list is Duke's Foster, whose Blue Devil teams were ranked No. 1 in the AP poll on 10 occasions during his stint at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Moving forward from that time capsule, toss in the names that followed such as Jeff Jones and Pete Gillen at Virginia; Roy Williams at UNC; Gary Williams at Maryland; Jim Valvano and Herb Sendek at N.C. State; Dave Odom and Skip Prosser at Wake; Bobby Cremins at Georgia Tech; Rick Barnes at Clemson; and of course, Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, and that's somewhat imposing.
Put those coaches together and you've got 11 national championships, 33 Final Fours, and 150 NCAA tournament appearances. Not too shabby.
Even BC and Clemson lost major experience when Al Skinner and Oliver Purnell left after last season, both having coached more than 600 games.
Just look at the NCAA titles, Final Four appearances, NCAA tournament appearances by the previous list of coaches.
Then look at the current roster of ACC coaches. Bet you can't even name 'em. Used to be all the names would roll off your tongue as easy as the alphabet.
Outside of Krzyzewski and the two Williams' does any of the current crop of ACC coaches strike fear into another team's hearts when they get off the bus?
We believe Virginia's Tony Bennett has the potential to join the coaching greats in the league and even perhaps Seth Greenberg at Virginia Tech if he can weather the storm. Otherwise, there's not much to be excited about from the rest of the league.
So, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it until proven otherwise.
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