The Atlantic Coast Conference came into the season as one of the weaker power conferences with most around the sport expecting it to be fairly top heavy with Duke and North Carolina at the top and everyone else jumbled in between.
Over the last two days, we've gotten a taste of just how bad the ACC looks, and it's worse than expected.
The ACC/SEC Challenge went underway for the second time on Wednesday and Thursday, where the two conferences faced off against one another for two days, and it's a battle that the ACC is happy ended.
ACC teams went just 2-14 across the two days. On top of that, ACC teams lost 11 of those 14 games by double digits and 5 of those games by 20 or more points. The ACC was just 2-6 at home in the event.
The SEC looked like the best conference in college basketball before the event began with 8 teams ranked in this week's AP Top 25, more than any other conference. But not many people around college basketball expected the throttling the SEC would do to the ACC.
The ACC had three teams ranked in this week's poll: #9 Duke, #18 Pittsburgh, and #20 North Carolina.
The Blue Devils picked up a crucial win over #2 Auburn at home 84-78 which the program needed to boost its resume, especially after this event.
The Panthers and Tar Heels didn't have the same outcomes against their SEC opponents though.
UNC fell to #10 Alabama on its home floor 94-79 to drop to 4-4 on the season and will probably be out of the AP Poll after this week.
Pitt picked up quality wins over the first few weeks of the season over teams like West Virginia and LSU and were looking like the clear cut second-best team in the ACC. Then, the Panthers traveled to Mississippi State to take on the Bulldogs and were absolutely thrown out of the gym, losing 90-57.
The only other ACC win was Clemson over #4 Kentucky 70-66 at home, which marks two solid wins for the ACC. Besides Duke and Clemson, the conference looked like a whole lot of mediocre.
It can be expected UNC and Pitt will fall out of the Top 25, but Clemson has a good shot of jumping in now with an 8-1 record and wins over Kentucky and Penn State.
But with a maximum of two teams ranked a month through the season, the ACC put on display just how bad it may be for the remainder of the season.
Duke is now the only ACC team in the top 20 at KenPom with the next highest program being Clemson at 22. The ACC also only has 4 clubs in the top 50 at KenPom.
The ACC still boasts 3 teams in the top 15 of the NET rankings in Duke (4), Pittsburgh (12), and Clemson (13).
It was known before the ACC/SEC Challenge that Duke needed a quality win on its resume before conference play started to boost its resume, and now it looks more that way than ever after the ACC performed in the event.
As it looks right now, Duke's toughest conference games will all come on the road at Louisville, Clemson, and North Carolina. Unless the Blue Devils completely roll these teams by 20 or more points each time, none of these games will provide much of a jolt on the Blue Devils' resume. Duke absolutely needed the win versus Auburn and now have much more leeway when seeding time comes around for the NCAA Tournament.
The Blue Devils will have one more quality non-conference opportunity against #19 Illinois on February 22nd.