After a chaotic regular season that saw ACC teams dropping in and out of the rankings at breakneck speed, the conference tournament is finally almost underway — taking place for the first time at Gas South Arena in Duluth, Ga. The initial games of the playoff, between teams that did not fare well enough to earn byes, start Wednesday when 13th-seeded Stanford takes on No. 12-seed Miami at 11 a.m.
In the meantime, the coaches that will be present at the tournament all held virtual press conferences to get the ball rolling. Each had a different point to make — whether it was about strength of schedule, the new location of the tournament or something else entirely.
Difficult competition
The point harped on most often and most aggressively Monday morning was that of how challenging the ACC was this year. The conference has produced plenty of upsets over the course of the season, ranging from ranked-on-ranked matchups to wins like Virginia’s 74-72 takedown of No. 12 Louisville or Clemson’s 53-51 victory against Duke.
Many of the coaches, perhaps in attempts to boost their team’s resumes come NCAA Tournament time, made cases for the strength of the ACC. Syracuse’s Felisha Legette-Jack was the most vocal on this front when discussing the conference the Orange have faced this season.
“We’re one of the best conferences in the country. We’ve proven that time and time again,” Legette-Jack said Monday. “We’re beating up on each other a little bit because we are really good at knowing each other, but when we go out throughout the country, we show that we can compete against anybody out there. It’s hard every single game to go up against these cats. But I’ll tell you one thing, when we go out there against the world, I put my money in the ACC.”
Shawn Poppie, the skipper for Clemson, shamelessly advocated for his group — one that has been on the bubble all year but significantly improved its standing with the upset over the Blue Devils. That said, a blowout loss to Cal may have put the Tigers back in harm’s way. How they fare during the ACC Tournament could be a significant factor in their ultimate fate.
“Coming down the stretch, we go to Notre Dame and beat Notre Dame, who upset Louisville on the road yesterday. You’ve got an N.C. State win under your belt, Duke a week ago,” Poppie said. “Eleven wins in this league, 20 overall. I think this team is no doubt an NCAA Tournament team, and one that could make some noise in the right matchups. … The more you can add to your resume, the easier it is to put you in there. But as you look around the grand scheme, I think there’s no doubt this team’s an NCAA Tournament team.”
Is it Atlanta?
Another big talking point was the tournament’s new location, which caused more issue for some squads than others. Coach Courtney Banghart of North Carolina was not particularly thrilled with the move from Greensboro, N.C., — probably because the tournament went from being about an hour from Chapel Hill to a little over five. Sunday after the Tar Heels’ home win over Duke to end the regular season, Banghart expressed her displeasure with the setting.
“I don’t even know where Duluth is. I’ll be quite honest,” Banghart said. “I thought it’s Atlanta, I’m hearing it’s not Atlanta. I don’t really know,” Banghart said. “… I think people wanted it to move. I thought Greensboro had done a really good job. I know it looks like it’s a home court advantage for us, N.C. State and Duke. Well, those have been the top three teams.”
Unsurprisingly, it was the west coast coaches who seemed to mind the least. It doesn’t really make much of a difference to them where the games are played — it’ll be a long flight and a three-hour time change either way.
“Every coach who comes to play out west, they say, ‘I don’t know how you guys do this,’” Stanford coach Kate Paye said. “Our team is used to it. We have a system, we have a routine, we have no excuses. We’ll be back there and we’ll be ready to go whatever time that tip is at.”
“We do everything that we can to mitigate it, but it’s not something that we want to talk about very much, because it’s nothing that we can control,” Golden Bears head coach Charmin Smith said of the travel time. “… We’re really excited to be in this conference. We wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, so we’re not going to complain about being able to participate in the ACC tournament.”
Perhaps the only coach that seemed truly excited about this year’s location was Georgia Tech’s Karen Blair, who can presumably expect to have a lot more support at Gas South than’s her team has found in Greensboro.
“We’re happy to be home,” Blair said. “… We’ve been really good at home this year, and so we’re just going to try and make this an extension of home as we go up into this ACC Tournament.”
Other notes
Duke’s Kara Lawson wins the award for funniest quote of the day, when she responded to a question about whether her team is feeling the pressure at all to defend the trophy it won at last year’s tournament:
“I haven’t even said that word, defend. I mean, well, I haven’t said that word as it relates to championships,” Lawson said. “Clearly, I say that word a lot in how we play; we’ve got to defend, that’s for sure. We have to defend ball screens and one-on-one drives and we gotta box out out. We better worry about defending that stuff. We don’t need to be worried about defending anything else.”
Jeff Walz of Louisville, always good for a strong quote, had his own piece to say about how he feels his team and conference on the whole has been treated by fans and the media.
“I’ve been in it for 30-something years. When we [in women’s basketball] get a narrative, we stick with it. We aren’t very good at, as stories develop and teams develop, talking about them,” Walz said. “And we’re not the only team. We’re going to beat that dead horse as long as we can. That’s just kind of what we do in women’s basketball. … I’ve just been kind of shocked we haven’t heard more about what these players have done here on a national stage.”
Ultimately, this ACC Tournament is shaping up to be one of the best in a while, and not necessarily just because of the nationally-ranked powerhouse, but also because of those groups that are just behind them. Virginia and Syracuse have both proven they can really ruin somebody’s day when they’re playing their best basketball, and that’s without mentioning Clemson, N.C. State or a Notre Dame squad that can take down anyone when Hannah Hidalgo is having a good day. In short, there is going to be a lot of good basketball played this week.
Perhaps nobody put it better than the Wolfpack’s Wes Moore in his press conference — the last one of the day: “March gladness is upon us.”
The ACC Tournament begins Wednesday and will run through to its championship match at noon on Sunday. Every squad is fighting for these games to not be their last.
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