Rise of Big East has knocked ACC down a rung. But is the change permanent?

As the tournament crowd strolled out of the Greensboro Coliseum in 2006, the ACC walked on basketball clouds.

Champion Duke snatched the No. 1 ranking and rolled toward the NCAA Tournament, pursuing the conference's fourth national title in six seasons. Boston College, the last of three expansion schools, pushed the Blue Devils to the final shot that Sunday afternoon, suggesting sunny days ahead for the new college order.

Frozen in time, the moment seems absurdly quaint and perversely deceptive.

Duke didn't march to March glory, its freight train derailed by cold hands and LSU feet in the regional semifinals. The Blue Devils haven't driven through the Sweet 16 roadblock since 2004, nor has any ACC team other than North Carolina.

As the ACC Tournament finally returns to its natural moorings this long weekend, long faces permeate the conference boardroom. The ACC doesn't seem quite so special any more, with fewer loud teams and a softer voice in the NCAA conversation.

The Tar Heels, NCAA kings twice in five seasons, fell off the throne and rolled into quicksand. Those gurgling sounds represent the NIT bubble.

Although seven ACC teams could make the field -- a testament to depth and parity -- only first-place brothers Duke and Maryland deserve preferred seeds. They're the only two teams in the next-to-last AP poll, a number matched by the Atlantic 10 and Mountain West. Brighter lights shine on the Big East (five ranked teams, with three in the top 10), the Big 12, the Big Ten and Kentucky, fueled by a freshman, John Wall, from a Raleigh private school.

Duke, positioned for a No. 1 seed and Final Four run, could camouflage the conference's relative decline, just as Carolina did the past three years. The Tar Heels reached a regional final, national semifinal and the top rung while the other ACC teams went 9-15 with seven first-round checkouts and one Sweet 16 appearance.

Damage estimates vary. NBA scouts and former coaches often cite the disbursement of talent to football hotbeds in the Big 12 and SEC, which snagged the three NCAA trophies between Carolina's bookends.

Terry Holland, the East Carolina athletics director and former Virginia coach, sees little difference between the ACC and other major conferences.

"There is a lot of parity," Holland said, "and very good teams can take an elevator ride that seems unusual to us old-timers. Look at Texas."

There's a widespread assumption that Big East schools progressed by winning just enough head-to-head recruiting battles.

Some basketball folks nod toward the coaching roster. Other than Mike Krzyzewski, Gary Williams and Roy Williams, with six titles combined, ACC coaches haven't burned up the tournament trail. In a surprising exception, Paul Hewitt directed Georgia Tech to the 2004 title game after it went 9-7 in the league. That was his only season in 10 above .500, and he has won only one other NCAA game.

Changing game

Dave Odom, the former Wake Forest coach, draws broad conclusions from his TV analyst's chair.

"I think it's fair to say that the ACC is not as strong as we who have lived in this area so long are accustomed to it being," Odom said. "That said, I don't think the nation is as strong as it typically is. I don't know that it will ever be like in the mid-'80s and '90s and one or two years in the 2000s. Players leave early for the NBA. There aren't so many juniors and seniors. It's impossible to have that kind of veteran team we remember."

Bobby Cremins, whose name adorns the Georgia Tech court, helped unmask Carolina on Dec. 30 when his College of Charleston bunch rocked the ninth-ranked Tar Heels.

"I'm upset when I keep hearing the ACC is down," Cremins said. "Duke-Maryland was the best game of the year. I get mad. Obviously, all the talk is about Carolina being down. They came in here beat up, with two guys hurt. We caught them at the perfect time, and it took a miracle shot to put it into overtime.

"I just think the ACC has been taking a beating lately. I don't like it. I keep my mouth shut. When I watch a game like Duke-Maryland, I'm proud to say I coached in this league. I know I'm biased. I'm an ACC guy. Is Duke as good as those great teams in the '90s with Christian Laettner, Grant Hill and Bobby Hurley? No, but nobody else is."

In 2006, when J.J. Redick broke the ACC career scoring record and Shelden Williams patrolled the lane, a reporter asked Krzyzewski how Duke might fare against his earlier powers. Krzyzewski laughed and asked, in so many choice words: Are you kidding?

The game has changed everywhere, and the ACC's influence within the NCAA game has receded. Duke and high-flying Maryland might alter the flow in the tournament, but during the regular season, both lost to Wisconsin and both lost their only games against top-10 opponents from the Big East.

Bucky Waters, a former Duke coach and longtime TV analyst, cuts through the abstract ACC defenses with scoreboard news. The ACC won the annual series against the Big Ten the first 10 seasons, and then along came 2009-10.

"The fact is, we lost the Big Ten Challenge," Waters said. "That's a fact."

Expansion damage

This winter, the ACC has been losing the debate against the Big East, which competes for many of the same recruits, media attention and TV viewers. Whether it's coincidence, karma, a point on the competitive cycle or a direct consequence, the big picture started changing after the ACC dipped into the Big East for expansion clubs Virginia Tech, Miami and BC.

The lures of football money and power drove expansion. The ACC needed three more teams to reach 12 and thus qualify for a conference-title game under provocative NCAA rules.

So far, the campaign has delivered TV money but little else. The ACC has won only one BCS bowl since 2000 and has suffered in the polls, inviting ridicule. As Miami and Florida State faded, Virginia Tech emerged as the perennial power, placing between No. 7 and No. 10 in four of the past six final AP polls -- the peak for the ACC, which didn't even produce a top-10 team the other two years.

In basketball, the ACC ran afoul of the law of unintended consequences. The Big East restocked with schools deep in basketball tradition: Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette and recently downtrodden DePaul. That shored up the league's soft middle and created a vast bubble pool above the weak bottom.

"Sweet irony," said one opponent of ACC expansion.

Waters, who grew up in New Jersey and calls games for Madison Square Garden's network, credits former Commissioner Mike Tranghese for remaking the Big East on the fly.

"He got blindsided," Waters said. "He pulled the curtain back and saw the ACC stealing his inventory, so he went out and made them better. They went out and got basketball schools -- not only basketball schools, but hardcore basketball schools."

Waters also traces college basketball's cohesion problems to one-and-done prospects jumping to the NBA and the all-star tenor of the AAU circuit, which supplies recruits. As he surveys the ACC, though, Waters keeps coming back to the same demarcation.

"I'd like to lay it all on expansion," he said. "All the basketball people are still going crazy about expansion. Some years, Duke and Wake just play once, or maybe Duke plays State once. How many times does Carolina play Wake? You never know. Expansion changed everything. It really took a chunk out of our culture."

Not everyone concedes the Big East's prowess despite the current rankings and three titles since 1999.

"I'm not one that says the Big East is all that great," Odom said. "I don't even look at it as a conference. I look at it more as a coalition of l6 teams. They've got eight really, really solid programs, and maybe you could stretch it to 10. I think the ACC, by and large, can pretty well match that. The last six teams in the Big East -- well, I don't know if there's strength in numbers. I don't know if they're head and shoulders above everybody this year. Once you get past the top four, it becomes just OK. I wouldn't be the one to say that's a killer league."

If the NCAA Tournament turns out like the regular season, plenty of guys from other basketball cultures will say it for him.

lrawlings@wsjournal.com