The Big Four fails to send team to Sweet 16 for first time since Black Sunday happened in 1979! Wow.
Good news is that Virginia advanced to keep the ACC’s streak of 35 straight years of having a S16 team.
Tobacco Road hasn’t seen a springtime drought like this in more than three decades.
For the first time since 1979, the ACC’s Big Four — Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina State and Wake Forest — won’t have a participant in the Sweet 16. If not for Virginia’s win over Memphis on Sunday night, the entire ACC, even with new additions Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame, would have been out before the Sweet 16 for the first time since ’79 too.
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There weren’t many close calls before ’96, as Dean Smith’s UNC teams made the Sweet 16 in every year between 1981 and 1993. Duke made the Sweet 16 in 1980.
In 1979, both Duke and Carolina lost their opening-round games (which were second rounders because of the tourney’s smaller field). Wake and State didn’t make the tournament.
Brett Friedlander takes a look at the Big Four’s struggles through the lens of the Final Four in this piece.
UNC’s loss to Iowa State in the third-round of the NCAA tournament, combined with earlier defeats by Duke and N.C. State, guaranteed a fourth straight season without an ACC team from North Carolina advancing to the Final Four.
It’s the first time that’s happened since just after Frank McGuire and Lennie Rosenbluth produced that first title more than a half century ago. The longest previous drought since 1962, when Wake Forest made its one and only Final Four appearance, was only two years.
So what gives?
After a combined 35 Final Fours and 11 national championships over an incredible era of dominance, have teams from North Carolina – most notably the Tar Heels and Blue Devils – finally lost their touch? Or have other factors contributed to the recent lack of NCAA tournament success?
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While unforeseen circumstances have and will always be an obstacle teams must face in the postseason, it’s also an undeniable fact that the landscape of college basketball has changed over the past few years.
Jabari Parker is expected to be the latest one-and-done player at DukeJabari Parker is expected to be the latest one-and-done player at Duke
Not only is the talent now spread out among more teams, but because of underclassmen leaving school early for the NBA, the disparity between the big boys and mid-majors stocked with experienced players that have been together for several seasons has shrunk considerably.
That scenario played out Friday when a young Duke team was upset in the opening round by a 14th-seeded Mercer featuring five senior starters.
Though it was never easy, the lack of continuity within the top programs has made the task of winning four straight games in March and getting to the Final Four is more difficult now than it’s ever been.
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