Last weekend was not a particularly kind one for UNC athletics. Both the UNC women and men’s basketball took painful (if not surprising) losses, and the baseball team dropped two of three games against an unranked Virgina team. All of this took place while UNC fans were dealing with the news that we probably have watched Caleb Wilson’s last game in UNC blue.
The good news is it’s a new week and a chance to turn the page. And it’s a special week, in which the days will be filled with basketball, as the ACC
tournament kicks off on Tuesday. UNC did enough to earn a double bye and won’t play until Thursday; but if you’re like me, you’ll be glued to the TV anyway. I can’t speak for the rest of ACC country, but in North Carolina this week used to feel a bit like a state holiday. I’m of the age that I fondly remember the TV’s in all the classrooms getting turned on to the noon game as soon as the tournament started on Friday after the results of the Les Robinson Invitational became official.
Getting to miss a day of class (and often, a couple more days as the NCAA tournament started the following week) is one of my favorite memories of the ACC tournament. I grew up in central NC and can remember the sense of community around the tournament. Almost everyone had a rooting interest and there was a lot of good-natured back and forth between fans of the different North Carolina schools. While I’m not going to pretend that watching Pittsburgh take on Stanford is quite the same, I still get a little more excited at the start of the ACC tournament week. If there’s one positive to take away from the massive expansion of the ACC in the last 15 years, it’s that we get to enjoy even more basketball during championship week.
So, let’s move on from this weekend with this question: what is your favorite ACC tournament moment? It might be a UNC championship run, one certain game, or even just the nostalgia of ACC tournaments past. Regardless, drop you answer in the comments below.
And if you need something to get yourself hyped this morning, here’s my favorite ACC tournament game memory.
