2008 ACC Conference Tournament Predictions
With Duke and North Carolina perennially among America’s college basketball giants, the ACC tournament features one of the most competitive brackets in the country. Jimmy Boyd’s 2008 ACC tournament predictions take an inside look at this year’s action.
Like most of the major conference tournaments, the ACC’s will be getting underway on Thursday March 16th at Charlotte Bobcats Arena and extending through the weekend. If you have access, the entire tournament will be broadcast on the Raycom Lincoln Financial Sports Network. The rest of you can see most all of the games on ESPN and ESPN 2.
The ACC tournament features 12 teams with the top four teams advancing to the quarterfinal via bye. Like in most years, North Carolina and Duke are the best teams in the ACC by a healthy margin. They are battling it out for first place in the ACC regular season standings, which looks like it could come down to a March 8th matchup between the two schools at Duke. How these teams play in the conference tournament could very well determine who gets a number one seed in the NCAA tournament. Let’s say Duke wins at home against North Carolina to sweep the season series and to win the ACC title, but the Blue Devils lose to the Tar Heels in the ACC tournament final. The tournament committee would have to fight off a headache to see which team should get a number one seed in the Big Dance.
Clemson, Virginia Tech, Maryland, and Miami are the other four schools that I feel have an outside chance to win this thing. Clemson is currently third in conference play and has taken the Tar Heels to OT before losing twice. The Tigers look to have the best chance of any team that isn’t Duke or North Carolina of winning it all. Clemson is 21-7 on the season and 9-5 in ACC play. The Tigers are one of the better teams in the country that no one is talking about because of all the attention that Duke and UNC have gotten this year. The Tigers have wins over Purdue and Ole Miss and have played UNC as tough as anybody, but smart money is on Duke or Carolina even though the value is not there. If Duke is to sweep the season series from the Tar Heels, look for North Carolina to get its revenge in the ACC tourney.
2007 Recap:
Rivals NC State and North Carolina faced off in last season’s ACC tourney final. No one thought 10 seed NC State would make it that far and they nearly pulled off the major upset. The game was actually much closer than the 89-80 final score indicated. The Tar Heels went on to win three games in the NCAA tourney before going down to Georgetown in the Elite Eight.
Previous winners:
2007 – North Carolina
2006 – Duke
2005 – Duke
2004 – Maryland
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