Welcome to another podcast by Inside Carolina.com, the independent voice of UNC Sports,

your home for Tar Heel football, basketball, and recruiting.

Welcome to the Inside Carolina podcast.

John Siegley here with Tate Fras the ringer.com. Hey, I really appreciate

you jumping on here, man. Yeah, Jonathan. How's it going, man? It's good. It's finally Duke

Carolina Week, so I'm pretty excited. It is basketball season, college basketball to be

specific because, you know, it's just better than the NBA. People can say what they want, but

college basketball is where, you know, kids actually still give effort, right? Yeah, that's a nice way to put it. I like that. That was a nice shot at the NBA. I'm more excited that the football is done. Super Bowl Sunday just happened. The Eagles get to win. I cover football, too. So I'm excited to talk all about college basketball and get done with all that stuff.

And the NBA will come.

I mean, there's a lot of problems in Cleveland.

The Warriors are now fatigue. They've got a whole all-star break. College doesn't have breaks. I mean, I guess they have spring break, but for the most part, we're all locked in in college basketball. So it's a good time. Oh, yeah. and this is the best time of year for college basketball too. I mean, February and March is where things really start getting interesting.

The conferences, Kansas will probably end up winning the Big 12 again, but I don't really want to talk about them too much.

What I want to talk with you about is the ACC because year in, year out, the ACC always says it's the best basketball conference.

But, man, this year, it is, I think, by far and away, the number one conference in the country right now. Yeah, I mean, if you look at it, I think a lot of people have pointed to the Big 12 as to be up there, but then they have the SEC Big 12 challenge, and the SEC wins. I don't know how much stock you can take in that, but, you know, the SEC, obviously, will take a lot of stock in it and say that they're the best conference in college basketball, as they're prone to do, even though Kentucky's struggling this year. It's actually a weird year all across the board for a lot of these Blue Blood Schools. You know, Kentucky's struggling. Carolina's obviously had their struggles. Duke loses to St. John. Kansas has sort of been all and off. I mean, they're losing at home this year, which is really unlike them. But I think the main thing that I'm watching in the ACC and the main storyline, that's sort of underrated is just Virginia right now, being undefeated in the ACC. I didn't, I never thought I would see a team go undefeated in the ACC. In fact, when, you know, every single year Duke is preseason number one and they get coordinated and we say that they could go undefeated, similar to what Kentucky almost did when they went 38 and 1. But I never buy stocking to that because I don't think it's possible to go undefeated in the ACC because the conference is just too good, it's too deep. there's too many teams. I mean, you just look at the team like Boston College this year. I mean, Jerome Robinson is breaking records, making all these shots. I mean, they beat Duke already, but, you know, you throw them away. They're not even a talking point with the ACC. There are so many good teams. I mean, you forget about a team like Louisville. I mean, I know they're struggling as of late, but Dave Padgett had done this great job in Louisville. It's this premier program, even without Patino. They have these athletes on their team that are unbelievable when you look at Dangadel. And Clemson, I think, is the real big shocker. I was actually joking the other day. They had this new YouTube TV commercial with Draymond Green, and they have a Clemson highlight as the streaming platform when they have the, like, you can watch sports games, and it's like Clemson basketball, and they're actually playing Carolina. And I was like, wow, Clemson has really made it in the college basketball ranks now. They're in commercials now for streaming stuff. But yeah, across the board, I mean, I think the ACC is just so deep. you almost forget how many good players and teams are in the conference. And, I mean, I know the Big 12 is probably the argument that most national writers will make always to be a little bit different. But yeah, for the ACC right now, I mean, you have the Virginia, which I believe is one of the best teams in the country, and they're undefeated in the conference. So that's a major storyline you've got to keep up with. And in terms of just the conference strength as a whole, I mean, you're looking at a team like Notre Dame who they've not had the best of seasons, but they're still a very dangerous team. And out of their 10 losses, seven those are in conference. So at 14 and 10, you're talking about a good team that just ran into the ACC.

And, I mean, I was looking over the standings.

The overall conference win-loss is just really good this year.

I mean, you're talking about the top nine teams.

So that's Virginia, Clemson, Duke, Miami, NC State, Florida State, North Carolina,

Louisville, Virginia Tech, and Syracuse, all of those teams have less than 10 losses overall.

So when you're looking ahead to like the NCAA tournament, I mean, could this be a year

you think where the ACC gets like nine, 10 teams in potentially?

I mean, I think there's always a chance. I mean, we already saw, you know, them have historic numbers as far as teams getting in the tournament. It's a weird position now because I feel like the Big Ten has, you know, teams really at the top that are really, you know, supremely good. I think Michigan State is the team right now that has a chance to contend for a title. We obviously saw that up

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