March Madness is underway and it hasn't been a lot of fun for fans of ACC teams. The league was operating from a deficit after landing just four teams in March Madness (one of whom was a highly controversial bubble entry), so the pressure was on for the league to deliver good results after a very weak season.
While North Carolina's emphatic First Four win appeared to be a good omen for the ACC, two of the league's other at-large teams flopped on Thursday afternoon.
Louisville couldn't take advantage of a near-home game in Lexington and got bounced by Creighton in the first game of the day while Clemson dug too deep an early hole after putting up just 13 points in the first half of a game they lost to 12-seed McNeese by two.
This is the ACC's worst start in modern March Madness history
The losses knock the ACC down to two teams before we even hit primetime on Thursday, and the most teams the ACC can get to the Round of 32 is two: Duke, which should easily win its 1-16 matchup with Mount St. Mary's, and North Carolina, which would need to upset Ole Miss to get there. CBS' Matt Norlander provided some historical context to the league's March Madness slump that is downright shocking.
Per CBS Sports' research team: McNeese beating Clemson means the ACC can only have two (at most) teams left in the round of 32/second round, which would tie for the league's fewest teams standing this early in the NCAA Tournament since the field expanded to 32 teams in 1975 🫣
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) March 20, 2025
While the ACC has had limited representation in quite a few years recently, their teams have usually done well, with surprising deep runs from North Carolina, Miami, Clemson and NC State over the past three years. Having just two ACC teams left in an era where 68 teams make the dance is astonishing and a marker of the true decline of a once proud basketball league.
The ACC has had a significant talent drain in the coaching department over the past half-decade as Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim, Tony Bennett, Jim Larranaga and Leonard Hamilton have all stepped away from their respective programs. Only the Blue Devils seem to have nailed their replacement with Jon Scheyer, who has kept Duke humming in top form, and if the rest of the league can't adapt to the new era of college basketball this could be an unfortunate new normal for the conference.