The Bottom


In the ongoing series of trying to figure out why the ACC has been down lately, I decided to take a look at the bottom.  The ACC is filled with proud programs who have a rich history in basketball (for the most part).  These teams are not used to struggling.  And usually bad years are just an anomaly.  So are the worst teams in the league getting worse?  I took a look at the last 10 years in the ACC, and compiled a list of the 10 worst records in that time.  Here's what it looks like:

As you can see, last year's Wake Forest team made the top of the list.  There isn't a whole lot you can look at as trends, but I did pick up on one thing.  For the most part this list is pretty spread out among the last 10 years.  But there are three seasons which have more than one team on the list.  One was the 2001-2002 season, which was a very bad year for the ACC, namely because North Carolina was so bad.  That year four of the nine ACC teams finished with overall records below .500.  One of the other years with more than one on the list was last season.  Wake Forest was the only team in the last 10 years to not win more than one conference game.


Most years I found that on average two teams finished with overall records below .500.  And a lot of times one of those teams would be in the range of 15-16, not terrible.  Last year three teams finished with records below .500.  This year Boston College, Georgia Tech and Wake Forest will almost certainly finish below .500.  And there's a decent chance that Clemson and/or Virginia Tech will do the same.


The bottom line is, someone has to finish last every year.  So not everyone's going to have a good record.  But teams can still perform well in their non-conference games so their record doesn't look so bad.  What these numbers mean is that more teams are just not very competitive than there usually are, which is a big reason why the ACC is down.


Before I wrap up, a couple other observations from that list of worst 10 records.  First off, it's amazing that Paul Hewitt stayed at Georgia Tech as long as he did.  Yes, he had some good seasons, but he made this list three times. In a fourth season, Georgia Tech finished 15-17.  Also, it's hard to look at this and blame ACC expansion.  Of the three schools added, only Miami in 2006-2007 made the bottom 10 list.  So Miami, BC and Virginia Tech have held their own and not been ACC doormats.  You also might be surprised that NC State is not on this list, for as much grief as Sidney Lowe got.  Yes, they weren't very good.  But they typically took care of business early in the season.  Twice NC State finished with 15-16 records despite really struggling in the ACC.