Sort of feel this next post might be worthy of a new thread, but I'll post it here.
Its very important to Syracuse (or any other ACC member) that the ACC gets fairly good again as a conference and at least does adequate in out of conference play. But the ACC has been far from that for 3 years running, with 24/25 (this year) being the clear low point. It's hard for your program to take the next step in relevancy if only 3-5 teams in an 18 team league are going to make the tournament.
The Final Four Runs by Miami and NC St were fool's gold with respect to the ACC's standing.... were they entertaining and good for momentary chest thumping. Sure, but they hid the reality of how bad the ACC was becoming, and some people chose to ignore the fact that the ACC absolutely sucked in 2022, 2023 and 2024 OOC, and the real implications it had on those years and more importantly potentially moving forward. Thinking things were still good in the ACC because of a few runs in the tournament, and claiming that the selection system was the issue and not the ACC. And here we are in 2024.
Sort of reminds of the chatter at the time that all was good at Syracuse because of our 2016 FF run and 2018 Elite 8. All the signs were there of a significant program decline as we were fighting just to be a bubble team. Ultimately we saw the reality of the situation and our continual decline.
