Think Duke is off its game in recent years? It's not alone. Its entire conference is not feeling the Madness these days, either.
Feeling mad, yes, because for the second time in three years, the NCAA tournament began with the hallowed Atlantic Coast Conference carrying a chip on its shoulder, beefing about being disrespected, griping that it's under-represented in the 65-team field. And, once again, most of its smaller-than-usual contingent are leaving without getting their dance cards punched.
Faces, yes. Cards, no.
Four went in. Three went out on consecutive days in the first weekend. Two went down to lower-seeded teams from a certain rival mega-conference.
Miami, of all teams, came off looking best, with a solid first-round win and a nail-biter of a loss to Texas yesterday. Miami. One of the football schools. More on that later.
Meanwhile, one of the exiled three, aforementioned Duke, went out with its ears burning.
"Duke's a great team. I think they'd fit in well in the Big East," West Virginia's Joe Alexander said after his team skunked the No. 2 seed Blue Devils in the second round Saturday in Washington. "But they definitely wouldn't dominate the Big East. We had a lot of great teams. I think the top six or seven teams are definitely right on par with Duke in the Big East, and the rest of them are right up there, too."
We pause here to remind the readers that this came from the Big East's fifth-place team and the second-lowest seed of the conference's eight entrants.
Oh, and that in the first round, the Big East team lower than it -- bubble team and No. 12 seed Villanova -- booted No. 5 seed Clemson, the third-place finisher in the ACC regular season and conference tournament finalist.
Yikes.
Of course, Alexander spoke prematurely -- almost as soon as his mouth closed, Big East teams started falling. Four bit the dust within the next 24 hours, including Georgetown.
The Hoyas' collapse probably wiped out a good two-thirds of America's brackets. Then again, that does prove his point about Duke and the Big East.
That's a separate issue from the ACC's artificially high impression of itself, though. It's still a painful fact that the ACC has the same number of teams alive as the Southern Conference (welcome, Davidson).
The ACC wasn't as good as advertised. It's not as good as it used to be, even just a few years ago.
