Marathon Men: ACC Tournament Four Game Winners

Five teams have lasted through four rounds of an ACC Tournament, most recently Duke in 2017. The Blue Devils were the only four-step survivors who won every game they played.

This test of stamina, concentration and determination didn’t become possible until 1992, when the conference expanded to nine members. The odd number of teams required a tournament play-in game. The contest between the eighth and ninth seeds was officially called the First Round but almost immediately became known as the Les Robinson Invitational.

The nickname was testament to the perennial presence in that round of NC State squads coached by Robinson, whose teams were ninth-seeded in 1993, 1994 and 1996 and No. 8 in 1995.

When the first four-game survivor appeared in 1997 at the Greensboro Coliseum, it was ironically NC State under Herb Sendek, Robinson’s successor.

Sendek cleverly quit putting rebounders on the line during his squad’s free throw attempts in the semifinals against Maryland in order to rest his players’ legs; they fell back on defense while shooters made 15 of 21 at the line.

Among the more intriguing records set in ’97 was State’s Justin Gainey playing every one of his team’s 160 minutes, most ever in an ACC Tournament. The guard, now an assistant coach at Arizona under former NC State assistant Sean Miller, also had eight steals, a mark matched by UNC’s Marcus Paige in 2015.

The four-game point leader remains the Wolfpack’s Brandon Costner, with 90 points in 2007. That time the new NC State coach was Sidney Lowe.

Oddly, all but one survivor of four tournament games met North Carolina along the way. The exception was North Carolina, which fell to Notre Dame in the 2015 final.