The NCAA Tournament is coming up, and analysts are constantly making predictions on brackets with how many teams from each conference could end up making the tournament. While the Big 12 has been viewed as one of if not the top basketball conference for several seasons now, it appears as if there’s a new top conference taking over.
As of the recent AP Poll, eight teams in the SEC are ranked, and more than that are expected to be involved in the NCAA Tournament. While teams like Auburn, Florida, and Alabama are doing well this year as expected, teams such as Missouri, Ole Miss, and Mississippi State have emerged as tournament teams as well.
Looking around the nation at other conferences, the ACC is no longer proving to be the dominant basketball conference it’s been in years past. While Duke is at the top and one of the best teams in the nation, the North Carolina Tar Heels aren’t even ranked as of the latest poll and aren’t playing to the standard that Chapel Hill has seen in recent years. As the ACC regular season comes to an end Saturday, a shocking statistic reveals just how poor the ACC play has been this year.
In a stat shared by David Teel on X, the ACC finishes the regular season on Saturday without there being any ranked versus ranked matchups in conference play between 180 games. On the other hand, the SEC will end with 43 of their 144 league contests being ranked versus ranked. It’s the first time there have been no ranked versus ranked matchups in the ACC since the 1966-67 season.
However, there’s a lot of change coming to the ACC to start next season. While North Carolina hopes to get a boost by adding a general manager to their program, Miami and Florida State are set to start the 2025-26 season with new head coaches hoping to bring some much-needed juice to their programs. But at the end of the day, catching up to the SEC won’t be an easy task, especially when you factor in the resources behind the programs.
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