Historically, The ACC Tournament Has Belonged To The Big Four

That teams from North Carolina have controlled the ACC off and on the court is a traditional source of frustration outside the borders of the state. Certainly the venerable Big Four - Duke, North Carolina, N.C. State and Wake Forest -- regularly assert their competitive dominance, as evidenced by the schools' performances in the ACC Tournament, the crowning event in the league season.

When it comes to championships, the foursome has been stunningly successful. No doubt that's in part a function of the tournament's being held within North Carolina in 50 of the ACC's 62 years. Still, geography and fan support don't adequately explain the 50 titles captured by the Big Four, with one more to be decided this weekend.

Whatever the reasons, the Big Four's preeminence isn't just a matter of producing a single survivor that reaches the last contest in the ACC Tournament. The quartet also crowds the semifinals to an impressive degree, never failing to advance at least one team that far.

Members of the Big Four reached the semifinals en masse six times, most recently in 2003. Three of the schools had teams in the semifinals on 24 other occasions.

Coming at it the other way, there were only five times that no more than one Big Four member survived to reach the semis.

So far the North Carolina schools were entirely shut out of the final just once. That was 1990, when Georgia Tech, en route to the Final Four under Bobby Cremins, defeated Virginia for the championship.

This year North Carolina, a 70-60 quarterfinal winner over Louisville, and Duke, which crushed N.C. State 77-53 in another quarterfinal, have reached the next-to-last round of the single-elimination ACC Tournament.