Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is fired up about the new-look ACC.
How fired up?
Coach K believes the additions of Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame this year and Louisville in 2014 will take the ACC to heights as yet unseen in major college basketball.
“We’re going to be a 10-bid conference,” Krzyzewski said on a conference call to officially announce that he would coach Team USA through the 2016 Olympics, according to The Sporting News. “We’re going to be the best conference in the history of the game.”
In 2011, the Big East set a record by sending 11 team to the NCAA Tournament.
By 2014, the ACC will have seven former Big East schools, including 2013 NCAA champion Louisville and Syracuse, which reached the Final Four this year.
Four of the schools in the ACC this coming year have won NCAA championships since 2002: Maryland (2002), Syracuse (2003), North Carolina (2009) and Duke (2010).
“I think it’ll be great,” Krzyzewski said. “From a basketball guy, a lifer, to have so many brands, basketball brands in this conference and the level of coaching and accomplishment … I think will be great for the game. I’m really excited about it.”
Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, whose team hosts Duke this year at the Carrier Dome and who will again serve as an assistant to Coach K in 2016, agreed.
“It’s a great league,” he told SNY.tv recently. “It was a really good league and you added us and Notre Dame and Pittsburgh to the league, so it’s only going to get better.”
Also, as Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News pointed out, the bottom tier of the ACC will have to improve and pull its weight to fulfill Coach K’s 10-bid promise.
Wake Forest, Georgia Tech and Boston College haven’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2010 and Virginia Tech hasn’t gone since 2007.
The elite teams will also beat up on not only the bottom-feeders but one another as well, which as DeCourcy points out, will also help them come tournament time.
“At the end of the day, our sport is only judged by if you win the national championship. When you’re in the best league, I truly believe you have a greater chance of doing it,” Krzyzewski said. “You play more games at that championship level than the other guy. As long as you don’t get hurt, the experience of doing that has got to help you.”
