Talent and tradition tell the tale. Year after year, decade after decade, far more often than not, it’s Duke or North Carolina.
Prior to each season since 1970, members of the region’s media have been polled, quite unscientifically, on a projected order of finish in ACC men’s basketball. For all the boasting about the conference’s competitive balance, for all the periodic excitement about rising new powers, more than three-quarters of the time the choice to finish atop the ACC has been either Carolina or Duke.
This thinking is habitual, and eminently reasonable, given that one of the pair has won 61 percent of the ACC tournaments over those 46 years and been to all but six finals.