5 Best/Worst ACC Teams of the Past Decade

There have been a deluge of "Decade lists" all over the internet over the past several weeks.  As such we make no claim to be original as we provide you two more.  However this is a first in the sense that each weekend as the season moves on we will be giving you some historical rankings, a look back at the past of the ACC.   It will hopefully give context when somebody makes the claim that a current team is "historic" in some sense or another if we know who precisely they are competing against for that designation.

Some requirements for the "best of" list

• The team must have won the ACC regular season that year or lost to another team on this list.  We will not be rewarding teams who coasted through the regular season then turned it on for a few games straight at the end here
• The team must have won a national championship or have come close.  That's a standard that most conferences couldn't handle, but the ACC has had enough post-season success over the past decade that this doesn't really even need to be a rule.  But teams like Duke's 2006 edition that ran threw the regular season but came up short in the postseason won't cut it here
  
• The team must be competitive with other teams on this list.  In 2007 UVA and UNC tied for the regular season championship at 11-5.  Neither of those teams ended up in the Final 4, but even if they had its fairly obvious that they could not compare to ACC champs from other eras.  Last year's ACC for instance, with a loaded UNC team as well as strong Duke, Clemson and Wake squads, probably had 4 and maybe 5 teams that could have won the ACC in 2007.  Success matters, but so does quality of competition that year.

So on to the list.

5 Best ACC Teams of the Past Decade

Honorable Mention:  Georgia Tech 2004, UNC 2008

5. Maryland 2002- The best of Gary Williams teams at Maryland, this group showed what his brand of underdog toughness looked like when it was backed by NBA level talent.  This team dropped only 4 games all season, sweeping through the ACC regular season with their only loss occurring in Cameron Indoor Stadium to a Duke team equally loaded with NBA talent.  After a disappointing loss in the ACC Tournament, they swept through the NCAAs winning all their games by 8 points or more. Lonnie Baxter and Juan Dixon both scored more than 25 points in the elite eight to offset a huge scoring performance by Caron Butler of UConn and they then beat a formidable Kansas team in the semifinal.  However their performance is somewhat diminished by the fact that they faced by far the weakest finals opponent of the decade when they played Indiana, who was unranked in the AP poll going into the tournament before catching fire and knocking out excellent Duke and Florida teams on the way to the finals.

4. Duke 2004- Absolutely JJ Redick's best team, although this team belonged to the veteran point guard who it seemed had been at Duke forever, Chris Duhon, and the athletic freshman from London, Luol Deng.  With a starting lineup of Duhon, Redick, Daniel Ewing, Deng, and Shelden Williams this Duke team featured 3 future lottery picks, 6 future NBA players, 2 national defensive players of the year, and the ACC's #2 all time scorer.  It was a conglomeration of talent that seemed to get better throughout the season before falling short to a loaded UConn team featuring Emeka Okafor and Ben Gordon in the final 4. 

3. UNC 2005- A team that finally fulfilled its potential after a few years of teasing Tar Heels fans, this team featured 4 high NBA draft picks in Sean May, Raymond Felton, Rashad McCants, and Marvin Williams.  After an early embarrassing loss to Santa Clara without Felton, this team spent the rest of the season reestablishing Roy Williams reputation as one of the best coaches in the business.  They won a loaded ACC that featured 3 Top 5 ranked teams in the final rankings, with their only losses coming on the home floors of the other 2 top ranked teams (Duke and Wake).   They then swept through the NCAAs before engaging in a classic final with an extremely popular and talented Illinois team in what many consider the best final of the decade (although the edge here goes to Memphis-Kansas).

2. UNC 2009-  Stop me if this sounds familiar, after a few years of not quite making it behind a quick point guard, NBA quality shooting guard, and big physical center, UNC broke through and won a title for Roy Williams, getting contributions from an athletic freshman big man along the way.  In this case the talent on hand was arguably even better, with Tyler Hansbrough finishing as the all time leading scorer in the ACC, Ty Lawson becoming arguably the most feared player by defenders in the country, and Wayne Ellington, Deon Thompson and Danny Green providing multiple other NBA level options.  The Heels dropped a few games in the ACC, but it mostly appeared to be due to boredom.  They swept a solid Duke squad, winning the ACC regular season in the process, lost a game to Florida State in the ACC tournament, and then swept through the NCAAs without being seriously threatened along the way.


1. Duke 2001 -  What makes this Duke team stand out from the rest?  The sheer amount of talent on board.  They had 5 guys who went on to consistently start in the NBA (4 of them are still starting for teams in the NBA, with the 5th being Jason Williams, who was considered the best of the bunch before his motorcycle accident).  They had 2 National players of the year, including Shane Battier who was also a 3 time National Defensive player of the year.  They had a future NBA all star in the post in Carlos Boozer, a physical wing player in Nate James who knew how to win, a budding star in Mike Dunleavy who peaked at just the right time in the national championship game, and most of all, 2 stars who refused to let Duke lose that season in Battier and Williams.  The best talent of any ACC team this decade + a hall of fame coach = a National Championship for the best team of the past decade in the ACC.

And for the 5 worst teams of the decade:

Honorable Mention: Clemson 2000, NC State 2009

5. NC State 2008-  There is no way this team should have been on this list.  Before the season started Gavin Grant was boldly predicting a final 4 and "no more than 4 losses"  This was a team coming off a hopeful 2007 season, with budding stars Brandon Costner and Ben McCauley, and seasoned veterans like Grant that had added a blue chip freshman in JJ Hickson.  Yet Chemistry issues caused the team to fall apart.  After dropping some easy games early (New Orleans), they came together for a while, beating a tough Davidson team, before chemistry issues caused them to implode completely as they lost their last 9 games of the season to end up with a losing 15-16 record.  While its true that other teams not listed here may be worst, this team deserves special recognition for a complete waste of talent.

4. Miami 2007- For a team with some considerable talent (Jack McClinton, Denis Clemente, Dwayne Collins) this Miami team ended up being very bad indeed.  They finished 4-12 in a mediocre ACC with only 2 wins over an erratic Maryland team to claim to their credit.  They lost early to bad teams (Buffalo, Cleveland State, Binghampton) and by a lot to good teams (UNC 105-UM 64).  It was a forgettable year for a team with more talent than they showed.




3. Florida State 2001 - Now here was a team without talent.  Their best player, Delvon Arrington (who?), didn't even average 12 points a game.  They only managed 9 wins on the season, and 4 wins in ACC play (mostly due to a team that we will cover in a second).  There really isn't much good to be said about this team, other than the fact that it was better than #2 on the list.



2. Clemson 2001- Despite winning 12 games on the season, this Clemson team (and the 2000 team that was arguably just as bad) checks in here because it was somehow swept by the abysmal Florida State team above.  That doesn't need or deserve any further explanation.


1. UNC 2002 - How in the world does one of the flagship programs in college basketball, which had 2 of the teams in the other rankings, produce the worst ACC team of this decade?  I have no idea.  I hadn't planned on putting UNC here, I was going to rank them somewhere but I assumed that it couldn't really have been that bad.  I was wrong. 8-20 overall, tied for last in the league with (you guessed it) Florida State and Clemson. (The early years of this decade were not kind to those 2 schools).  Their only ACC wins were against FSU, GTech and Clemson.  They lost to Hampton.  They lost to Davidson (non Steph Curry edition).  They lost to College of Charleston (yes history does repeat itself).  In fact they lost to a lot of people.   Except for a crazy stretch in the middle of the season where they won 5 of 6, there was absolutely nothing good about this season.  Losing by a combined 66 points in their 3 meetings with Duke that season, including 2 in a row to end their season, capped off what was the worst ACC season of the decade completely appropriately.





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