It’s Still Important in ACC Country : Here’s Why Postseason Tournament Means So Much With So Little at Stake

Thursday afternoon, as five of the eight ACC basketball teams loped through their final workouts before the ACC tournament begins here today, a young reporter circled the Greensboro Coliseum asking this question: Why does this tournament still mean so much when, in truth, it means so little?

The answer is easy: tradition. People have been planning a weekend in March around this tournament since 1954 and that is never going to change. What’s more, no matter how many times the coaches tell their players not to care, they do.

In 1980, when Maryland lost the ACC final to Duke at the buzzer, there wasn’t a dry eye in the locker room. Two weeks later, when they lost in the NCAA tournament to Georgetown, no one cried. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s what makes it fun. This isn’t about sense or logic or bids or bubbles.

Once, only one team emerged from this weekend with a bid to the NCAA tournament. The best basketball team the University of Maryland has ever fielded didn’t play in the NCAA tournament because it lost what is arguably the best college game ever played, the 1974 final to North Carolina State.

One year later, when it was the defending national champion, the Wolfpack -- led by David Thompson -- didn’t get a chance to defend its title because Maryland beat it twice in the regular season and North Carolina beat it in the tournament final. Two ACC teams went to the NCAA tournament that year -- N.C. State wasn’t one of them.

Now, that has all changed. North Carolina, N.C. State, Duke and Georgia Tech will take the floor Friday with NCAA bids locked up. Actually, only two teams in the field realistically have something at stake here: Maryland, which can clinch an NCAA bid by beating Georgia Tech, and Clemson, which could wrap up an NIT bid by upsetting N.C. State.

Other than that, barring one of the bottom three pulling a monumental upset and getting into the NCAAs by winning the tournament, the only thing at stake will be pride.

It doesn’t matter. The teams will play these games as if they were the Final Four. The fans will live and die the same way and the coaches, even though their brains will tell them not to, will be as into the games as any they will play next week.

Why? “It’s a neighborhood thing,” Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “Everyone wants to be the most respected guy on his own block. That’s what this is about, being king of the block for a year.”

Older players explain this to younger players and older coaches explain this to younger coaches.

Familiarity breeds many things, but in this league, it has bred tradition. N.C. State fans, many of whom will be here Friday, still remember the infamous 12-10 game of 1967 when the Wolfpack upset a powerhouse Duke team. They also remember last year’s stunning victory in the final over a clearly superior North Carolina team.

Duke and Maryland fans will always argue about the ending of the 1980 final. Did Kenny Dennard undercut Buck Williams? Should it have been called? Most of the 16,500 who will be here this weekend will be the same people who couldn’t help but laugh and cry all at once when the Maryland players almost killed themselves trying to get Lefty Driesell up on their shoulders after winning the 1984 final.

“Put me down,” Driesell kept yelling, “you guys are gonna hurt yourselves.”

Driesell was here Thursday, still the center of attention even as a TV analyst. Even as his successor at Maryland, Bob Wade, was conducting interviews in one corner of the building, Driesell was in the process of whipping Dick Vitale, 4-2 (retired), in a game of one-on-one that had everyone in the building roaring.

Vitale had insisted before the game that the two men were playing for paychecks: Lefty’s TV money for the weekend vs. Vitale’s. Once beaten, Vitale said, “Dinner, I’ll take you to a nice dinner.”

“Dinner nothin’,” Driesell said, “you said we were playin’ for checks.”

“Just joking Lefty baby,” Vitale said.

They’ll retell that one in years to come -- actually, Driesell was probably retelling it Thursday night -- but the size of the bet hardly matters. Everyone had a laugh and Driesell then had to fend off questions about whether he was going to be the next coach at James Madison.

“I wonder,” he joked, “if we could get in the ACC. I’ll take the job and say we’re gonna be the Duke of the East. Or would that be the Duke of the North?”

This is the way it is every year on Thursday. The coaches are loose -- Wade being a notable exception this year with his terse, brief answers -- the players enjoy themselves and when the games begin, it doesn’t matter what they do or do not mean. Billy Packer flies in every year for the workouts and the first day of the tournament. He hardly needs the work but, being a Wake Forest graduate, he wouldn’t miss the tournament.

“If there’s any way to be here,” he said, “I’ll be here.”

Which is the way everyone feels. Every year they play the NCAAs and that’s important. But before that they play The Tournament. It starts at noon Friday. It will end about 51 hours later. But the memories will linger long after that.