For the 3rd time in the last 4 years the ACC has the most Sweet 16 teams. This year the ACC is tied Big 12 at 4 teams – Syracuse, Clemson, Florida State and Duke. Now I’m not going to use this to make an argument that the ACC was clearly the country’s #1 basketball conference this year. That’s tough to do when your regular season and tournament champion Virginia is bounced from the NCAA by #16 seed UMBC.
North Carolina and Miami didn’t play to their seedings either. Other years you can say this, but not this year. That said – it still speaks to depth of the ACC, and any discussion of the premier basketball conferences has to include the ACC.
For the last 4 years the ACC has a remarkable run of Sweet 16 teams. Even with just 1 Sweet 16 team in 2017, the numbers still have the conference ahead of everyone else.
No high major conference has the success rate getting their teams to the sweet 16 either. Nearly 52% of the ACC’s tournament teams ended up making the Sweet 16.
| Bids | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | Sweet 16 Teams | Percent of Sweet 16 Teams | |
| ACC | 31 | 5 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 16 | 25.0% |
| Big 12 | 27 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 12 | 18.8% |
| Big 10 | 25 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 10 | 15.6% |
| SEC | 21 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 7 | 10.9% |
| Pac 12 | 18 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 7 | 10.9% |
| Big East | 24 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 7.8% |
| WCC | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4.7% | |
| MVC | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3.1% | |
| West Coast | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1.6% | |
| Mountain West | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1.6% |
It’s been excellent run of college basketball in the ACC the last 4 years, and there may be more to come this year. 4 of the last 12 Final 4 participants are from the ACC too, that’s 33%, and 2 (Duke, UNC) of the last 3 Title winners were from the ACC too.
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