But don't you realize, Roy doesn't try to win ACC championships, it's just not important (especially when they lose to the Good Guys).
Let me tell you, if you don't already know, back in the day, the ACC championship was THE most important part of the season.
I think he tries but we seem to live in an odd time in America these days. Facts somehow have stopped becoming facts. They've become "alternative facts" apparently. This of course permeates in our politics and apparently into everywhere else as well. In terms of this issue, the ACC Tournament winner is the official Champion of the Atlantic Coast Conference. ACC has this in bylaws and that's how it's been for 60+ years. Some schools, most notably (you know who) have decided that they get to make the rules and so finishing 1st in an unbalanced league is now the big thing. Did you catch Bilas's comment during the game the other night lamenting how the ACC didn't even recognize a first place finisher for most of it's history? he's correct and I've said as much for years. 1990 is when the
ACC started giving it attention after Clemson shockingly finished 1st and Cliff Ellis and Co. pitched a fit for more recognition.
I agree with Ellis and Clemson, it probably did deserve more attention though not as El Deano did in deciding on his own to hang banners for them in the 1980's. "Hey I Thought we won those"? famously exclaimed by Jimmy V when he looked up in the chapel hill rafters and saw banners representing league champs in years his team won the ACC Tournament. Unfortunately, the days of old are gone and we have a little problem now. The round robin is dead and no league schedules are created equal. I didn't see UNC go to Virginia, I didn't see them go to Blacksburg and I didn't see them go to Tallahassee. Of course Duke played all the upper echelon teams on the road. (shocker-and this is merely one example there’s many examples for all the teams in the league year after year.)
Yes someone will chime in with the inevitable moth eaten "Well Duke hangs banners for RS.", Yea, true, know when that started? in the 2000's(lol) and only because slowly but surely everyone else started doing retro feel good acknowledgement and as they began to do renovations in Cameron changing things here and there they added them. I don't have a problem with that, but I do remember when I would go to Cameron in the 80's and 90's and the only banners for ACC honors were ACC Championships.
We saw this weekend the power of redemption that the most tradition rich conference tournament in College Basketball still has when Duke finally had the best player in College back on it's team. Duke was able to beat it's arch rival, hoist a trophy and cut nets, and then turn a likely 2 seed back into a solid 1 seed again in the NCAA'S that people had them pegged for prior to 2/20/2019.
So, congrats to the 2019 Atlantic Coast Conference Champion Duke Blue Devils.
