Conference tournaments are about basketball but also so much more: the fans, parents, bands, cheerleaders, etc. The ACC Tournament is taking place this week in Washington, DC, and we could not be more excited to be there in person! HoopsHD will be covering all the angles so you can look forward to an abundance of articles in the days ahead. Jon Teitel continues our coverage with a recap of tonight’s ACC title game.
I finished on a high note with the food: street tacos/street corn…both delicious. Let’s tip it off:
NC STATE-NORTH CAROLINA
The crowd is mostly blue but there are plenty of patches of red and are all hyped for tonight’s title game:
North Carolina is the heavy favorite, as NC State is the 10 seed and has not won this tourney since 1987 (when they had a 68-67 win over UNC at the Capital Centre in Landover, MD). After some inconsistent performances earlier this week it was exciting to see all the stars show up big in the 1st half. For the Wolfpack it was their 180-pound DJ (Horne) who made a ton of jump shots and a 3 from the top of the key and their 275-pound DJ (Burns), who not only dominated in the lane but also knocked down the 1st 3-PT shot of his career (he had been 0-9!). The Tar Heels turned to their own dynamic SR duo with RJ Davis making a trio of trifectas (including 1 of the step-back variety followed by a stare-down of the NC State bench) and Armando Bacot scoring plenty of points in the paint. It looked like they would come up just short in the 1st stanza but thanks to a Cormac Ryan corner 3 at the buzzer they held a 40-39 lead at halftime.
Different half, same star-power in the 2nd stanza. Bacot made layups/dunks (finishing with a double-double), Davis made everything else (finishing with a team-high 30 PTS), but it was simply not enough. Horne eventually fouled out but not before converting an old-fashioned and new-fashioned 3-PT play en route to a team-high 29 PTS, while Burns kept backing down Bacot in the post before sinking shots around the hoop (and earning tourney MVP honors). When the confetti settled NC State somehow had won 5 games in 5 days including the final 1 by the score of 84-76 to win its 1st ACC tourney title in 37 years and secure a spot in the field on Selection Sunday. No postgame press conference but check back tomorrow for my best photos from the postgame celebration…but see below for a sneak preview:
The Hoops HD Selection Committee – Saturday, March 16th
NOTE: At the time this article was posted, the WAC Championship between Grand Canyon and Texas-Arlington was still in progress; hence both teams being placed on the master seed list. This list has since been updated to reflect Grand Canyon winning this game.
As for tonight, our first order of business was to finish adding teams to our at-large board. We had the Big 10 open up a spot by virtue of Illinois and Nebraska advancing to the title game; we also had the SEC open up thanks to Auburn and Florida advancing to their title game. At this point in time, we prepared to add two teams to the at-large column. Each committee member voted for their top six teams still Under Consideration (except carryover teams Texas A&M and Oklahoma). In this round of voting, Michigan State, Virginia, Colorado and Indiana State were added to the nomination board. These teams were ranked 1 through 6 by each committee member; the two teams added to the board were Michigan State and Texas A&M. Virginia, Colorado and Indiana State were carryovers; Oklahoma was booted back to the Under Consideration board after missing the cut on back-to-back ballots.
We repeated the same process for adding two more contingency teams; these spots would open up depending on how the ACC and Pac-12 conference tournaments played out. This time, Oklahoma, Providence and Grand Canyon (assuming they needed an at-large) were added to the nomination board with the three carryover teams. In the final round of voting, Colorado and Indiana State were named as the contingency teams.
At this point, we went back to the task of building the remaining master seed list. We had seeded up to 76 teams on our master seed list because we had potential bid thieves like VCU, Duquesne, UAB and Temple that needed to be placed on the seed list. Just as we were finishing the master seed list, there were two monster upsets that made the contingency picks of Colorado and Indiana State meaningless; NC State pulled off the amazing feat of winning 5 games in 5 days to win the ACC Championship and Oregon also stole the automatic bid in the last-ever Pac-12 Championship!
Our final task was to do an initial scrub of the master seed list; each committee member could make motions to move teams up and down the seed list as necessary. At the time this article was written, the list was reduced to 72 teams; this will go down to 71 after the WAC Championship goes final. Our last four teams in the at-large field ended up being St. John’s, Florida Atlantic, Texas A&M and Seton Hall. Our first four teams out were Colorado, Indiana State, Virginia and Oklahoma.
Tomorrow will be the final day of our Selection Committee meetings; we will do one final scrub of the master seed list and potentially entertain motions to move teams off of the at-large board and revote a team (or teams) into the field. There will likely be two brackets that will be made based on the championship game in the American – one bracket will feature UAB as the auto-bid winner and the other bracket will feature Temple as the auto-bid winner. Come back tomorrow afternoon and see what our final bracket (or brackets) will be at that time!