High NCAA Seeds Are An ACC Tradition

Bubbles. Blather. Betting. Bitching.

It’s NCAA tournament time!

Spend all the energy you want debating which teams deserved which seeds, or no seeds at all. Now that we’ve learned the ACC got three No. 1s in the ’19 field -- only the second time any league did that, after the Big East in 2009 -- if history is any guide we can go ahead and write in Duke, UNC or UVa reaching the Final Four.

This is the sixth time since seeding began in 1979 that the ACC earned multiple number ones. On each of the five previous occasions in which the ACC had at last two No. 1s, a league representative survived to reach the Final Four.

In fact, on three of those five occasions an ACC top seed won the national championship.

The ACC has now received an impressive 40 No. 1 seeds in 41 years of seeding. We’d call that a habit.

This is the fifth time North Carolina has been involved in a top-seeded ACC contingent, the fourth for Duke, the third for Virginia. The Tar Heels reached the Final Four every previous time they arrived as part of an ACC No.1-contingent.