The North Carolina Tar Heels won their first ACC regular-season title in seven years with an 84-79 victory over arch-enemy Duke on Saturday. The conference’s annual season finale is one of the most beautiful events in college basketball, but there’s a feeling that fans should enjoy this rivalry and ACC basketball as a whole because who knows how long the conference will last.
In the meantime, let’s all bask in the glory of the “Real Housewives of Cameron Indoor” throwing drinks at the UNC players and embracing their inner heel.
The banter that takes place between these two enemies is always entertaining and always unpredictable. Senior Tar Heel guard Cormac Ryan led all scorers with 31 points, including the game-winning free throws with 4.7 ticks remaining. Ryan is UNC’s fourth-leading scorer of the year with around 11 points per game, had not exceeded the 30-point mark in his career and, by the way, has been on the college campus since 2018.
You could say he’s an unlikely hero – or should be a doctor – but at the same time it makes perfect sense that some random grinder stepped in on Cameron and repeatedly silenced the Crazies in a game UNC won handily . There is so little left of what makes men’s soccer great, but one of those things is top-notch conferences and fixtures.
With the Big East no longer being the Big East as we know and love it, the ACC took over as the league most associated with and obsessed with college basketball. Obviously the Tar Heels and Blue Devils are a big reason for this, and if they ever regroup they would essentially be a package deal like Michigan and Ohio State.
North Carolina State is as fanatical as anyone about college basketball. It would be sacrilegious to disband any of the four ACC programs in the Tar Heel State, as NC State and Wake Forest enjoy disrupting the blackout of Durham and Chapel Hill whenever possible. Next season, Cal and Stanford join the upset, and it will be as strange as Kansas meeting Arizona in regular-season Big 12 play. (Kansas-Houston on Saturday was troubling enough.)
However, as Florida State looks to take over its football program and head home after being left out of the College Football Playoff, the future of the ACC is unclear. Television rights deals dictate that these moronic conference commissioners chase the slightest whiff of money, and if that were wrong, the folks down in Tallahassee would know that the easiest route to the CFP was through the ACC.
If student-athletes become paid employees, unfettered revenue streams will be threatened and the hunt for television money will become even more prominent. If I weren’t convinced that the American higher education system is run by greedy scumbags, I’d say that perhaps one day the profits will be so infinitesimally small that all that’s left is tradition.
But what then? Conference commissioners reconsider realignment like David Filoni Star Wars? If only.
Kamilla Cardoso decides the game
Kamilla Cardoso, who had yet to achieve a triple in her career, probably didn’t call glass, but when you’re trying to do everything perfectly in any sport, you need a little luck. Lost in the media’s lust for Caitlin Clark are the South Carolina women, who went undefeated in the most Team of Destiny finals ever.
Trailing by 1.1 seconds, the Lady Vols decided to give SC’s most unimpressive candidate free rein to clinch the victory.
De La Soul, what’s the magic number?
After completing the regular season, the Gamecocks are now 31-0 and one win away from winning the SEC Tournament. Dawn Staley’s group has the No. 1 overall seed and will be looking for revenge in March Madness.