At the beginning of the power conferences' Championship Week, the Atlantic Coast Conference had the potential of breaking the record of teams getting into the NCAA Tournament. That honor is currently held by the old Big East, which plunked in 11 of their 16 teams back in 2011. Eight teams are listed as locks for the ACC with four teams currently on the bubble: Syracuse, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, and Clemson. With all these squads boasting impressive resumes against all the great teams in this conference, they all had a chance to make a run and not need to actually win the tournament itself.
Clemson Tigers
The day started with Clemson, a 12-seed taking on NC State, who fired their head coach just a few weeks ago. Boasting just a 6-12 conference record, the Tigers couldn't afford a loss. They were able to pick up the win fairly easy, 75-61. NC State's 15 turnovers led to Clemson attempting 18 more field goals, and they were able to tally 13 assists on 29 made shots. With a victory over Duke on Wednesday afternoon, the Tigers might be able to pen enough on their resume to convince the committee of a big dance berth.
Wake Forest and Georgia Tech
Wake Forest has the toughest road to make a convincing argument. They took down the worst team in the ACC, Boston College, 92-78. It wasn't as dominant as the final score indicated, but the Demon Deacons hit 53.2 percent of their shots and made 9-of-19 3-pointers.
Their next task is to take down Virginia Tech, which in itself may still not be enough to get them in the dance with an RPI of 45. However, advance and getting a chance to take down Florida State might.
However, the ACC will probably just have a long shot to tie the Big East record. Pittsburgh upset Georgia Tech 61-59 in the nightcap.
Both teams shot around 37 percent from the field and the Yellow Jackets couldn't pull out a much-needed win from a sloppy game. With no at-large bid ever having more than 14 losses, GT could have bucked the trend with a laundry list of good wins. Now with another bad loss pegged on the resume, it's next to improbable to think they'll be called on Sunday.
The first three games in the second round will be important for the remaining ACC bubble teams. Syracuse tips things off with Miami, and although they are expected to be in according to most projections, they'd really notch another solid win by getting revenge on the Hurricanes. The Orange lost to them 70-55 in the second game of conference play.
