For decades Duke and North Carolina have dominated the ACC. The intense feud between the two programs has grown into one of the best rivalries in all of college basketball. The ACC Men’s Basketball Record Book reports that last year was the first time since 2003 that one of these schools did not share or win outright the ACC regular season title. Was Miami’s first ACC title win in program history a foreshadowing of what is to come for these two popular programs?
With the addition of Notre Dame, Syracuse, and Pitt this season, and Louisville in 2014, the Duke-UNC era of domination in the ACC might be nearing an end. According to ESPN, Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim had this to say about his team making the move from the Big East to the ACC.
“They’re equally tough,” Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said. “This league will be tough, as tough as our [former] league, for sure. But it shouldn’t be a hard adjustment. It’s just as hard. We’ll have the same tough games that you had in the Big East. It’s not easier. It’s not harder. It’s as hard.”
I think the adjustment will be much harder for the teams in the ACC. In the Big East you face the possibility of losing against anybody if you do not bring your A game every single night. This was the toughest conference in college basketball. Last year the Louisville Cardinals lost three games in a row in conference play yet still went on to bring the NCAA championship trophy back to Louisville, Kentucky. Almost every year there is a different team winning the Big East crown and they seem to always get at least one team to the Final Four every year. Duke and UNC are going to have to turn it up a notch if they plan on continuing their supremacy because these former Big East programs are coming full force to end their reign. What do you think? Will Duke and UNC still reign as the kings of the ACC?