With the ACC in quite the down year, it's unsure how many squads within the conference can realistically make the NCAA Tournament. Especially as we head into conference play where, in this year's ACC, Quadrant 1 wins will come at a scarce supply, there aren't many clubs that will have the resume needed to earn an at-large bid.
The ACC is 5-27 this season against ranked non-conference opponents, the most such losses in the history of the conference. With this record, it will be difficult for teams who didn't cash out in the non-con to make up for that in conference play.
Let's take a look at the teams that can realistically get there.
It's common knowledge around the sport at this point that Duke runs the ACC and is far and away the best team in the conference. The Blue Devils are the lone ranked ACC team at #4 and the only team in the top-10 of the NET rankings at #3.
Duke isn't just a tournament team, it is a bonafide national championship contender. The lack of Quadrant 1 opportunities won't hurt Duke as much as other teams in the league as the Blue Devils did their damage through the non-conference slate. What can hurt Jon Scheyer's group is a bad loss against a much inferior opponent in conference play, and those opportunities will come at a premium.
But outside of Duke who will be fighting for a #1-seed come March, there's a few other teams that are more likely than not, going to make the tournament.
No other ACC team is ranked, but there are four in the top-40 of the NET: Pittsburgh (11), SMU (30), Clemson (36), and North Carolina (39). All of those squads also received votes in the latest AP Poll.
SMU has been the biggest surprise so far this season out of the ACC. Picked 13th in the ACC preseason poll, the Mustangs are 11-2 with a respectable NET ranking. Despite being 0-2 in Quad 1 games, they are 11-0 in the rest of the quadrants.
The Mustangs look like potentially the second-best team in the conference in the first year under Andy Enfield, but with no Quad 1 wins on the resume yet and only three of those opportunities remaining on the schedule, they will need to win at least two of those to feel comfortable on Selection Sunday.
Early on in the season, Pitt looked like a legit team that could push for a 4 or 5 seed with one of the best backcourts in the ACC in Ishmael Leggett and Jaland Lowe. After starting out the season 6-0, the Panthers faced a three-game stretch of its first three Quad 1 opportunities of the season and lost two of them.
Pitt beat Ohio State by 1, lost to Wisconsin on a neutral floor by 14, and got obliterated at Mississippi State 90-57.
I still see a lot of potential with this Pitt squad currently sitting at 10-2, but similar to SMU it will need to take advantage in all of its limited remaining Quad 1 games.
Clemson and North Carolina sit in a pretty similar boat right now. Both teams played a good amount of Quad 1 or 2 games, but the record isn't great against top tier competition.
Clemson is 2-1 in Quad 1 with solid wins over Penn State and #10 Kentucky, but is 1-2 in Quad 2 with losses to Memphis and South Carolina.
For the Tar Heels, they haven't played any Quad 2 games, but are just 2-5 in Quad 1.
Hubert Davis had the right idea to schedule a gauntlet of a non-con schedule to prove UNC is a contender, but sometimes that can come back to bite you if it doesn't work out.
UNC recently picked up its first big time win of the season in the CBS Sports Classic against #15 UCLA, but has lost all of its other four games against ranked opponents.
Both these schools have very little leeway to suffer bad losses in ACC play as neither has all that much on their resume to prove they are NCAA Tournament teams.
As for the schools above, all of them should be dancing in March. But outside of Duke, there's no other shoe-in team to make it.
Outside of these five teams, Louisville is the next highest rated ACC team in the NET at 60, but after that it drops all the way to Stanford at 85.
Louisville looked the part of an exciting sleeper team early on, but injuries look to have derailed their season at least at the moment.
At this point in time it looks like the number of ACC teams that can realistically make the tournament is five. Four of them are "probably," and one of them is a definite. After these five however, maybe with the exception of Louisville, it's hard to see a path for anyone else.