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Greensboro. N.C.
Ladd on Sports: AGC basketball continues to reign supreme
Josh Ladd
Sports Columnist
Over the past several years, there has been
a mass exodus of the top high school bas
ketball talent to the NBA.
Gone are the days when players stayed in col
lege for four years. Now, if a top star doesn't
choose to bypass college basketball completely,
it's a rarity if he stays past his sophomore sea-
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TALEISHA BOWEN/GUILFORDIAN
Ladd, on sports
Nostradamus
wanna-bes shout, there is no way the sport can
survive.
Granted, the 2004-05 NCAA season would've
been better if it had included superstars like
Leßron James and Dwight Howard. But if you
think that college basketball is dead or on life
support because of their absence, then you need
to look no further than the Atlantic Coast
Conference (ACC) to see just how unreliable
these clairvoyants' tea leaves are.
This past Sunday, Duke defeated Georgia Tech
for its unprecedented sixth ACC Tournament title
in the past seven years.
The Blue Devils' were rewarded with a number
one seed in the NCAA Tournament, which tips off
this week. North Carolina, Wake Forest, North
DUKE.SCOUT.COM
UNC's Marvin Williams shoots the game win
ning shot over Duke's Sheldon Williams in
UNC's Mar. 6 victory over the Blue Devils in
the Dean Dome
son.
The doom
prophets have
been lining up
everywhere pos
sible to proclaim
the imminent
demise of NCAA
basketball. With
the best young
players forego
ing it, the
SPORTS
Carolina State, and Georgia Tech will join Duke
as ACC representatives in the Tournament. UNC
will be a one seed as well, and Wake Forest will
be a two.
The 2005 incarnation of March Madness could
very well be like most others in recent memory:
another chance for the ACC to flex its muscles
and assert its dominance.
Since 1988, only two Final Fours have been
played without an ACC representative. In that
same time period, the ACC has had two teams
make it to the final weekend of the NCAA
Tournament four times.
Most importantly, ACC teams have won five
championships in that time frame. No other con
ference has won more than three.
This year, a vast majority of pundits have UNC
and Duke reaching the Final Four. Quite a few
believe that Wake Forest will join them.
But the ACC mystique goes far beyond champi
onships, Final Four appearances, and NCAA
Tournament bids. ACC basketball is an intangible,
almost ephemeral force that permeates the hearts
and minds of people up and down the East Coast,
and even throughout the nation.
In North Carolina, where college basketball is
practically a religion, Duke, NC State, UNC, and
Wake Forest provide passionate fan rivalries
i^r^SE^Kfttitttik
WAKEFORESTSPORTS.COM
Wake Forest sophomore guard Chris
Paul leads the Demon Deacons
throughout the state.
Worker productivity dramatically decreases dur
ing the ACC Tournament. The announcement of
the NCAA brackets are awaited throughout ACC
country with the kind of anticipation that accom
panies the impending birth of a child.
The names of past greats echo throughout the
lore of the conference. Depending upon what part
Www, guilt ordian. com
of the state you are in, names like David
Thompson, Dean Smith, Christian Laettner, and
Billy Packer will either bring a warm smile, or a
string of profanities.
Grey areas between love and hate are rare in
the hearts of these schools' fans. Those whose
hearts are
open to
loving
more than
one of
these four
schools
are typical
ly ostra
cized and
viewed as
pariahs by
the diehard
fans of
particular
teams.
This
holds
especially
true when
talking
about the
rivalry
between
UNC and
RAMBLINWRECK.COM
Georgia Tech Senior B.J. Elder hopes
to bring Tech back to the Final Four
for the second straight year
Duke. It is impossible to discuss ACC basketball
without bringing up the greatest rivalry in college
basketball.
UNC and Duke have been involved in enough
recruiting battles, tightly contested games, and
conference championship match-ups to accrue an
acrimony equal to that between the Yankees and
the Red Sox.
However, instead of being separated by the dis
tance between Boston and New York, imagine
Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park only being a
little more than 10 miles away from each other.
That's what you have with Duke and UNC, and
their respective homes in Durham and Chapel
Hill.
On the day of games between the two rivals,
both cities are known to shut down. Bonfires are
not atypical on the home campus of the winner.
That's just for regular season games. It cranks
up several notches when they meet in the ACC
tournament. The intensity and anticipation blan
kets the two cities, increasing exponentially in the
hours proceeding tip-off.
Remember, these two campuses are separated
by less than a 20-minute drive. There's a lot of
crossover between the fans. Because of that, par
ticularly high stakes games between the two
schools can lead to silent, nerve wracking family
dinners and strained romantic relationships.
This is not just something I know from second
hand accounts. As a lifelong, diehard, Carolina
fan, I'm speaking from personal experience.3B
Mar. 18, 2005