ACC commish tells ESPN they will be 'aggressive,' 'proactive' about changing league narrative

ACC commish Jim Phillips told ESPN that Clemson was unfairly left out of the NCAA Tournament.

by TigerNet Staff - Sat Mar 25 13:32:05 GMT-04:00 2023

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told ESPN's Andrea Adelson this week that he believes Clemson and North Carolina deserved inclusion in the NCAA men's basketball tournament and that the league will have to be "proactive" and "aggressive" to fight "a narrative" posed against his league going forward.

Clemson was left out of the NCAA Tournament despite a program-best 14 conference wins in the regular season and adding a 26-point win over NCAA Tournament team NC State in the ACC tourney. North Carolina's case staked on playing one of the toughest schedules in the nation and still managing a winning ACC record and seven wins over Net Quadrant 1/Q2 teams (and no losses to Q3/Q4). Both were in the NCAA committee's last four out, in the third and fourth places in that group.

Phillips made his thoughts known on the usage of the NET in the calculation.

"We're paying too much attention to the NET. I'm just not there on that," Phillips said. "It does not reward teams that play 20 conference games versus 18 or less, and so that's one of the things I'm hopeful in the future we don't spend more time on or put more credence to it. I think it deserves less. In the end, the greatest thing we have in that committee is the eye test, and I think that's been ignored. Go sit down and watch these games and watch who the best players are. I know the committee does that. I understand how that goes, but in the end, I don't feel that has really resonated the last two years with our teams."

The ACC was limited to five NCAA bids each of the last two years, while the Big Ten has averaged 8.5 and the SEC, seven. Despite the disparity in representatives, the ACC has topped the Big Ten in Sweet 16 teams over the last two seasons (4 to 3) with four Elite Eight teams to zero for the Big Ten. The ACC is the lone one among those leagues to have an Elite Eight team in the 2023 tournament (Miami).

Phillips posed to ESPN that putting too much weight on the early results is not fair, given the amount of transition year-to-year with the transfer portal.

"This new day of college basketball is really present, and the influx of roster changes really does differentiate between a team that's returning seven or eight in the fall versus somebody that has seven or eight new players that's going to look quite different at the end of the year," Phillips said.

Clemson was docked for that early schedule with two losses and five wins coming against teams rated 200th or worse in the NET over November and December. The non-conference strength of schedule finished ranked 334th going into Selection Sunday.