ACC Announces Expansion Conferences, Schedule Pairings
by Ben Broman on Feb 3, 2012 3:13 PM EST
in Other Maryland Athletics
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PrintOne of the primary questions regarding ACC expansion - who goes in which conference, and how is scheduling effected? - has been answered. The ACC announced at their annual winter meetings that Syracuse will be joining Maryland in the Atlantic division, while Pittsburgh will reside in the Coastal.
The league is also adding a game to the conference schedule for football and two to the basketball schedule; meanwhile, it's still unclear when Pitt and 'Cuse will officially join the conference, but John Swofford said it appears it'll be "2013 at the earliest."
The "crossover partners" - the teams in the other division that are guaranteed to be on the football schedule - haven't changed for football; Maryland will still get Virginia every season. (Pitt and Cuse are their own crossovers.) However, based on the new basketball schedule format, there is a change in the basketball format; Maryland, instead of getting UVA and Duke twice a year, will face Pitt twice a year instead. They'll still face every team in the conference at least once, but the two-a-year foes will be determined on a rotating basis.
There's likely to be a backlash to this - if Maryland has any rivals, they're surely UVA and Duke - but it's a problem born out of not being enough of rivals. With each school only getting one basketball partner instead of two, those schools ended up with their "real" rivals - Virginia Tech for UVA, UNC for Duke - and Maryland was left standing there looking glumly at Pitt, like the kid who couldn't find a partner for a class project. (Not that I have any idea what that feels like, of course.)
(Side note: couldn't we have at least gotten N.C. State? I mean is Wake Forest really a big rival for them? Surely the Gary-Yow Bowl takes precedent above all else, no?)
The good news, of course, is that Maryland and Pittsburgh should be rivals. It's tough to manufacture these sorts of things - if only Jamie Dixon had taken the Maryland job after all - but c'mon, all the ingredients are there. So long as Mark Turgeon gets things up and running by 2013, there's some potential in this.
So, yell angrily below about losing Virginia and Duke. Frankly, I don't think there's another reasonable direction the conference could've gone in, unless they wanted to add two more schools and start that whole "pods" discussion.
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I'm fine with it.
I’d prefer playing Duke twice a year to playing Miami at all, but it is what it is.
Who knows what the NCAA landscape will look like in 25 years, but as you correctly noted, Maryland and Pittsburgh are ideally situated to develop a very good rivalry (unlike when the Big Ten tried to force Penn State and Michigan State into an arranged marriage that made no sense at all).
ben, do you know how many other two-a-year foes there are going to be each year besides the rivalry matchup?
this year we have 5 (GT, UNC, Miami, UVA, Duke), but i’m assuming there might not necessarily be the same amount once there are two extra teams in the conference. does that mean there are only going to be 2 two-a-year foe per year besides pitt?
You should keep the same number of Home and Home's
because it said they added 2 games to the schedule for the 2 new teams. We will get Pitt twice every year and then it will rotate with 4 groups of 4. So we will play Duke and UVA twice every three years.
Do we know if the seeding process will change for the ACC tourney?
Will they use a format like the Big East or Sec with East and West seedings?
Clarifying men's and women's basketball...
once there are two extra teams in the conference. does that mean there are only going to be 2 two-a-year foe per year besides pitt?
No, there will be four, as the hoops schedules will enlarge to 18 games. So Maryland will play four of the other 12 teams home-and-home, four at home and four on the road, rotating over a three-year cycle.
With a nine-game conference football schedule, I would guess there will be a three-year cycle for playing the other six Coastal teams, meaning you will see each of them in Byrd once every six years. (Good to have Syracuse back as an annual football rival.)
Oh, and for the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, there will be no divisions. “Atlantic” and “Coastal” applies only to football and baseball (though since SU has no baseball team, I’m not sure how that will work out; perhaps another school will get associate membership for that sport only).
Good explanation
The groups of four is a different concept so it can be hard to understand when you first read it
This doesn't make sense to me.
If there are now 14 teams in the conference then there are 13 other teams….
18 games total
5 teams twice and 8 teams once by my count…am I missing something?
by Zol on Feb 3, 2012 4:55 PM EST up reply actions
Simple solution
Maryland keeps UVA, Va. Tech gets Pitt. Maryland and UVA are historically ACC teams, Pitt & Tech were historically Big Least teams. Can you really make the argument that UVA should get Va. Tech based on like 8 years of “tradition”?
As Ben said, at minimum, we should have gotten NC State – we’re both school who lack a true rival, are historically ACC, and are more of a basketball school than football. There is a lot of history there too, especially in basketball.
This just seemed too much “Oh, these schools are close” rather than actually looking into which made the most sense for each school.
Also, hopefully this won’t be an issue for long, but don’t think this won’t hurt basketball attendance. Maryland is struggling to sell out Comcast now and losing a guaranteed home game with Duke each year, which is the biggest game on campus, is going to hurt.
I'm not sure it is that big of a deal Dave
We only lose a game with Duke at home once every three years, the other years we’ll have a home, and then once every three we’ll have a home and home series. So really, we lose Duke once every three years, hopefully it works out to where the year we lose Duke at home we get UNC at home.
I don’t think Pitt is as bad as a rival as you guys are making it out to be either. As I said in the other thread, it probably helps with recruiting. While everyone loves to hate Duke (seriously, who do you know that doesn’t hate Duke unless they are a Duke fan?), I think locally being able to pick up Pitt as a rival allows us to play off of the Ravens – Steelers and Caps – Penguins rivalries already in place for the area. If anything, it definitely helps in the Baltimore area.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to keep the home and home with Duke, but this was probably the next best alternative to it.
I agree Pitt could be good
And good point about Duke. But my bigger beef is that we didn’t get UVA. I think that’s kind of a shame, personally. I hate UVA more than Dook and I feel like keeping the home-and-home with them was the last piece of the ACC of yore, and now that’s gone too. I think it will end up fine at the end, but I still think it’s disappointing.
From UVa's point of view...
…Va. Tech is a must for a home-and-home, if it can only have one in the conference. I like the Virginia “battle of the Potomac” rivalry, too, but it’s not that big a deal to the Cavs, for whom the VT and North Carolina football games are top priorities. (UVa and UNC was the annual season football finale for many years, even into the early years of the ACC.)
Was just writing this up as well.
UVA-VT is the must have, but UVA-UNC is also considered the bigger game as opposed to UVA-UMD. Though I agree with Dave that of the older ACC teams, the one I’d most like to play continually is Virginia, but it’s just not possible (though I have absolutely no desire for a rivalry with NC State).
by FearTheTurtle on Feb 3, 2012 4:49 PM EST up reply actions
Football rivalries <> basketball rivalries
Replace Maryland-Pitt with Maryland-Virginia and Virginia Tech-Pitt. At least you guys are left with one of your old primary partners and don’t have to trade everything in for Pitt.
BC, on the other hand, made out like a bandit. LOVE trading Virginia Tech and Miami (football rivals, not hoops) for Cuse.
Editor, BC Interruption
Now if we could only
Get GTown hoops on the schedule every year…
I like Turtles!
Follow @HarryHareBear
by RedTurtle on Feb 3, 2012 4:56 PM EST via mobile reply actions 2 recs
And Navy
On the grid iron.
I like Turtles!
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by RedTurtle on Feb 3, 2012 4:58 PM EST via mobile up reply actions 2 recs
Pitt's the obvious choice (and a good one), plus we need more than just Duke.
Outside of a new “rivalry schedule” (which isn’t currently allowed by the NCAA), this seems to be the best choice, and I think it has a real chance to blossom into a decent rivalry for all the aforementioned reasons.
So now the real question, assuming Duke is our archenemy, does this make Pitt our nemesis? And where does Georgetown fit into this? Read The Importance of Being Hated to understand what I’m talking about.
I knew I hated
my neighbors dog named Duke for a reason.
I like Turtles!
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Great for Md
Great move here with Pitt. Would have really liked moving Va to Atlantic so we could have Pitt as our crossover for football too.
I like
Pitt works for all the reasons stated above, and I like the idea of having a rival across the two main sports. We totally need them to be football rivals, too.
On losing Duke, while it will blow, we still have Duke@Comcastle 2 out of 3 years. And as an added bonus, maybe the AD will finally get their wish as to the end of the F*** Duke chants at non-Duke events… or maybe it’ll just become F*** Pitt during Zombie Nation, lol.
New coaches, new rival—great time to build some new traditions!
Gary Williams take on the home and home pairing
Was listening to the sports writers yesterday afternoon when I was on the way to pick up the kid from daycare and they had Gary on for an interview. They brought up the home and home pairings towards the middle of the interview and Gary seemed pretty pissed we didn’t get paired with Duke.
While that was expected, what I didn’t expect was UVA wasn’t his second pick of a home and home, it was NC State. Outside of the obvious team pairings (Duke-UNC, UVA-Va Tech), I think NC State would of been one of my last picks. Actually, I think my order would of went something like Duke, UVA, Pitt, really annoyed at any other team past this outside of maybe Va Tech. NC State hasn’t been that great in recent years, and even though they have a 2nd tier team this year and a great recruiting class coming in I wasn’t that sure that is a good fit for MDs pairing. Although, the opportunity to beat Debbie Yow every year would be great, but that satisfaction would of been better if it was Gary doing it, not Turgeon.
There really wasn't much of a choice
If you can play only one team in the ACC home-and-home every year, the conference’s options are limited. Such pairings had to involve the four North Carolina schools, the two in Virginia and the two in Florida. That leaves you with Clemson-Georgia Tech and the four northernmost schools. From a Maryland perspective, I would have preferred Syracuse, but that would leave Boston College and Pitt, which aside from their years in the Big East don’t have much of a tie-in; BC vs. SU makes more sense geographically, with a rivalry that dates back to the ’50s, and that leaves Pitt for Maryland. (The schools did meet in successive years in the late ’70s, one year at Cole, the next year in Pittsburgh.)
At least the schedule has some balance, in that it affects everybody. Imagine how N.C. State fans feel. State and UNC have played at least twice a year in men’s basketball every year since 1920 (before there was intercollegiate basketball at College Park), and now that will end. ESPN probably insisted UNC and Duke continue.
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