The North Carolina Tar Heels won their first regular-season ACC title in seven years with an 84-79 victory over arch-nemesis Duke on Saturday. The conference’s annual season finale is one of the best things to happen in college basketball, but there’s a feeling fans should relish this rivalry, and ACC basketball in its together, because who knows how long the conference will exist in the future. .
So, in the meantime, let’s all bask in the glory of the Real Housewives of Cameron Indoor throwing drinks at UNC players kissing their inner heels.
The squabbles that take place between these two enemies are always entertaining and always unpredictable. Tar Heel senior guard Cormac Ryan led all scorers with 31 points, including the game-clinching free throws with 4.7 ticks remaining. Ryan is UNC’s fourth-leading scorer this year at around 11 points per game, hasn’t topped the 30-point mark in his career and, by the way, has been on a college campus since 2018.
You could argue that he’s an unlikely hero – or that he should be a doctor – but at the same time, it makes total sense that a random grinder walked into Cameron and silenced the Crazies repeatedly in a game that UNC won wire to wire. There are so few things left that make men’s soccer great, but one of them is premier conferences and matchups.
Once the Big East was no longer the Big East as we know and love it, the ACC took over as the league most easily associated with and obsessed over in college basketball. Obviously the Tar Heels and Blue Devils are a major reason for this, and if they ever realign, it would essentially be a package deal like Michigan and Ohio State.
North Carolina State is as fanatical as any in college hoops. It would be sacrilege to break up any of the four ACC programs in the Tar Heel State, as NC State and Wake Forest like to disrupt the Durham and Chapel Hill power trip whenever possible. Next season, Cal and Stanford join the fight, and it will be as strange as Kansas and Arizona meet in the regular-season Big 12. (Kansas-Houston Saturday was troubling enough.)
However, as Florida State attempts to resume its football (program) and return home after being overlooked for the College Football Playoff, the future of the ACC is unclear. TV rights deals force these moronic conference commissioners to chase every last whiff of money, and if that were wrong, the people of Tallahassee would know that in the future, the easiest path to CFP goes through the ACC.
When student-athletes turn into paid employees, unlimited revenue streams will be compromised and there will be even more emphasis on chasing TV money. If I weren’t convinced that the American university system is run by greedy bastards, I would say that maybe one day the profits will be so negligible that tradition will be the only thing left.
However, so what? Conference commissioners take up realignment like David Filoni does Star Wars? If only.
Kamilla Cardoso calls for play
Kamilla Cardoso, who hasn’t had a triple in her career, probably didn’t call the glass, but when you’re trying to achieve perfection in any sport, you need a little luck. Lost in the media’s lust for everything is Caitlin Clark’s South Carolina women, who remained undefeated as the most destined team ever to end.
Down by two with 1.1 seconds on the clock, the Lady Vols decided to let SC’s lowliest contender take a free look at the bucket for the win.
De La Soul, what is the magic number?
The Gamecocks are now 31-0 and one win away from sweeping the SEC tournament after making a run in the regular season. Dawn Staley’s group has the No. 1 overall seed and will be ready for revenge in March Madness.
