Outside Looking In

Virginia's capture of the ACC championship may have tipped the league scales decisively in a new direction. North Carolina teams have definitely hogged the spotlight over the past, say, 60 years, but now there seems to be a trend in another direction.

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The Cavaliers' second title - the other occurred in 1976 - meant that three straight teams from outside North Carolina won the conference championship, after Florida State in 2012 and Miami in 2013. That's the longest run ever by non-N.C. schools, which just goes to show how dominant the Big Four have been.

Fifty ACC Tournaments were won by the league's North Carolina contingent - 19 by Duke, 17 by UNC, 10 by N.C. State, and 4 by Wake Forest.

Not surprisingly, Virginia's triumph brought a measure of satisfaction to those tired of seeing Duke and North Carolina atop the conference heap.

The impression persists the ACC tends to cater to those two schools, and secondarily to N.C. State and Wake Forest. (Neither has been winning much lately.) After an apparent late foul was not called in a game won by a North Carolina team, a representative of a school from elsewhere noted sourly, "Just like us - welcome to the ACC."

Whatever.

Even with Virginia's victory, there have only been 11 titles won by non-North Carolina schools in the conference's 61 seasons. Included was the championship that went to South Carolina in 1971, after which it withdrew from the ACC, and the three won by Maryland, which is slated to depart this summer.