He was SO proud to see this Saturday night…

Two weeks from tomorrow, the ACC tournament in Greensboro, West Durham will be there.

ACC Network, he'll also ESPN, he'll do some TV, he'll do some radio, and maybe he'll make an appearance on talk shows if time allows and he joins us. You look sharp my friend, how are you? I'm good, thank you. I'm sorry I didn't look up here and I realize we're now multi-mediating.

You are, it's tremendous. I was making a couple notes here because I knew where this conversation was principally going to go. Okay. Because you and I have done this, oh, hundreds of times.

Yes we have. But I also wanted to make sure that I had some things right that I said might be right earlier in the day if you will. Okay. How are you?

I'm doing great. Congratulations, let me say this, congratulations to everybody who was involved Saturday night. That was, and look, you know this, I haven't lived in that state since 1988. But it's still where I grew up and I was as proud of the state of North Carolina Saturday night on all fronts as I've been in a long time for something other than the ACC.

How's that? You know, here's what's interesting about what we saw Saturday night, hurricanes and capitals at Carter-Finley Stadium. Right. I do pre and post for the hurricanes during the year and at 6.30 when we go on the air with Storm Watch, 30 minutes before the game starts, there's maybe 15% capacity in the arena. Maybe 15% capacity in the arena. We went on the air at 7 o'clock for an 8.20 faceoff with all of the options tailgating and everything you could have been doing.

Right. Half hour before we went on the air, the stadium was basically full. They opened the doors at 6 o'clock and I just expected it to be a slow trickle. By 6.30 it looked like the place was full and it was such a cool night. Sean McDonough was incredibly complimentary of everybody involved and he's terrific.

It looked great on television and that's a tip of the cap to everybody involved in that. Alright, let's get to some hoops here. I want to talk about State and Carolina and Duke and a little bit of Wake here. Jeff Caple said something, I guess it was after Pitt's latest win. He said it on the Zoom today.

Okay, on the Zoom today. There's not enough people pumping the tires, I'm paraphrasing here, of the ACC. He said they do it on the Big Ten Network all the time. I don't watch the Big Ten Network.

My friend Mike DeCorcy does a lot of stuff with them. If I was going to watch the Big Ten Network I would watch because of him but I just don't consume the ancillary programming. So I'll just take it on Caple's word that he's right. Right. Should we be on the ACC Network pumping the tires of the league?

Well I would ask you this and you just mentioned the Big Ten and so did Jeff Caple. Do they pump the tires on the Southeastern Conference Network? I think so, yes. So do I. Yeah.

So yes, I do believe that when you log on and you agree to click on to the ACC Network, it's like my dad used to say, you know, we broadcast the game looking through light blue glasses. Right. You know, it's not hard and fast.

We try and tell you when it's really good and if it's bad we'll admit it and say that. I have an issue with, you know, I'm going to be in the minority on this. Okay. I thought yesterday's Joe Leonardi appearance that they put on at the under-eight timeout in the first half of a two-point game between State and Carolina, I wouldn't have done that.

No. That bothered me. If I were there I wouldn't have done that because State and Carolina is good enough to carry itself.

An important game too. And Joe crossed his name off several holiday card lists in the ACC during his statement and said, don't shoot me, I'm the messenger and I know I'm saying da-da-da and this is the worst ACC of my lifetime. He didn't say that specifically, but essentially it was not a promotion for the league. Now that was on ESPN.

That was not on ACC Network. Right. That's a tough pill to take on a Sunday afternoon when the pride of both those fan bases is watching that game and to hear, you know, not only is Carolina probably not going to make the tournament if they lose, but the league's in as bad a shape as it's been in blah, blah, blah.

Okay. I think the league has got to, and you know this, Adam, because you and I have texted back and forth about it. The league is going to have to look at the landscape of how they're determining the NCAA tournament field now in a different way than they did five years ago. We're in the fifth year of the net and what has happened in the ACC since 2019 when we had three number ones is that we've had some things change on the landscape of the league, coaching wise, things of that nature. We have also seen schools continue to schedule in the non-conference vein the way they have for years. Correct. That has changed because you have to have the ability to play quad one games once you get into conference play in order to get multiple teams into higher places on the net.

And Dan and I have surmised in our study of the net, and we've done this, I hate to tell you, on the road, like on breakfast, we'll have coffee and you'll have hot chocolate and I'll be going through the net and we will be looking at how the net treated the night before. For instance, Pitt beat Miami in a terrific game earlier this year at the Peterson Event Center, they'll play the final day of the regular season. In that Pitt-Miami game, Miami dropped four spots and Pitt did not move in the net.

That was a great game. Yeah. Okay?

Duke beat Georgia Tech by 43 in Atlanta and went up six spots. Okay. Okay? The other night, Clemson beat Florida State by 40 at home and went up like 16 spots. Okay?

So that's just part of the inequity of the whole deal. And Buzz Williams, love Buzz Williams, said something the first year we had the net. If I'm down 24, my goal is to get it inside of 10 at the end of the game because it won't hurt me as much in the net.

Well, Buzz must know some secret sauce about the net that he didn't tell us on his way to College Station. Because margin of victory, the NCAA uses the word offensive versus defensive efficiencies. Okay.

That's a way to say margin of victory. Yeah. We have to find a way that the ACC becomes a successful non-conference league before they ever play the bulk of the conference schedule.

Because if you look at the way the net was set up when we went to league play in late December in earnest, you'll see that basically the league has not moved very much in the net. Yeah. See, here was my problem with the Joe Lenardi. Wes Durham is joining us here from the ACC. That's a long answer and I apologize. No, no, no.

What are we doing here? We're talking about the ACC. I was disturbed by the Lenardi appearance as long as it took. That should have been a halftime thing for me. Totally agree with you. Especially it was early in the day. It wasn't like 70 games had been played.

It didn't have four hours of highlights. Look, Joe's just doing Joe's job. I got no problem with Joe. And he's home with Corey and Doug and Tom Scofield produced it and they brought Joe in because Joe is a valuable piece of what we're doing with college basketball at this time of year.

No question about it. To me, overlaying that on top of a basketball game that mattered so much to both teams, I would argue mattered as much to state as it did to Carolina. The Tar Heels are in bad shape right now in terms of making the NCAA tournament.

But I was sort of amazed that they didn't talk about, to me, the elephant in the room. And the reason why the power rankings, the net, or even the others, Ken Palm, Bart Torvik, if you look at those two, where they have the ACC ranked and they're not that far apart, we've got five teams in the league that are historically bad. Five schools in the ACC that are in the bottom half of college basketball. But here's something else. You've also got five schools in this league that don't have a quad one win. Right. No, that's true. That's as big a problem, Adam, because it doesn't help your measurement collectively.

Right, but one leads to the other. If you've got five bad teams, and so people know, BC, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, Florida State, and Louisville, in the net are 184 and worse. Louisville is rated.308. By the way, Clemson, what are you doing?

What are you doing losing that game? That's just an aside. But Louisville is down there in an area where we see teams from the Southland Conference who finished ninth in the Southland. That's where they are. And we have too many of those teams that are, you don't have to drag it down a lot to have no quad one wins. Virginia has, right now, one quad one opportunity on their home floor in the entire league. If they're playing an ACC game at home, unless it's Duke right now, it's not a quad one opportunity. They already got away with beating Duke this year. So right now, that's a quad one win. But in a week, it might not be. So that's it. And all of that's impacted by the fact we've got five bad teams. Right. And here's the other part.

The biggest jumper since December in the net for the ACC is Louisville. Venture X from Capital One is the travel card for people always asking, where next? You earn 10x miles on hotels and rental cars and 5x miles on flights booked through Capital One travel and 2x miles on everything else you buy with Venture X. Plus receive premium travel benefits like access to over 1300 airport lounges. The Venture X card from Capital One. What's in your wallet? Terms apply.

See Capital One dot com for details. Louisville was 351 when we started conference play in late December in earnest. Louisville at 308 today. But here's the part about it that frustrates me. Okay, take those five and let them, you know, fall off into the abyss. All right.

We start with we're going to go Syracuse up right from 101 to 16 is where the other 10 teams in the league are. Right? Yeah.

Okay. At one point this year, the Big 12 who would never win a truth in advertising contest because they have 10 teams. Next year they'll have 14.

That's it. The Big 12 had all 10 of their members in the top 70. Well, look where the ACC has nine of their 10 members in the top 81. Right. So it shows you that the league is not that far off. But the bottom is so bad. Yeah. And the bottom has not recovered. Why? Because the bottom didn't have a great non-conference.

That's my whole point of this. You look at B.C., Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, Florida State, Louisville, and yes, even Syracuse. Syracuse didn't have a great non-conference schedule.

None of those teams did. Louisville was abysmal. Florida State, abysmal. Georgia Tech, you beat Georgia, okay, who lost by 49 to Alabama. Yeah, they won in Kentucky, but big damn deal. Yeah. You know, or they beat Kentucky in Athens, I should say. They got beat at Lexington.

So, I mean, if you're Josh Pastner, you can't play Florida Tech and Clayton State. You can't do it. Right.

You got to go find, and that's what I mean by this, Adam. We're going to have to change the methodology of the ACC in terms of the way we look at non-conference schedules. We just have to.

Because here's the other thing. Jeff Caple said this this morning. Didn't we win the ACC Big Ten Challenge? Yes, you did, Jeff. You beat Northwestern like a redheaded stepchild. You did. You kicked Northwestern. But the reality of it is, that game's not going to matter because you've got four quad one wins.

You're in the tournament. Mm-hmm. I think it is.

I think it is. Miami's got the most quad one wins with six. Virginia's got five. Pitt has four. Let me give you one. You know who's got the most quad one wins nationally? Don't look it up.

Okay, I will. Quad one wins nationally. I got 13. Iowa State. Close. Kansas. I thought about it.

Okay. You know who's got the second most quad one wins? Iowa State. Oh, look at that.

And you know why? Because of the Big 12. Right. The Big 12's got Kansas with 13. Iowa State, 8. Baylor, 8. Texas, 8. Highest number of quad one wins in the ACC?

Miami, 6. Mm-hmm. That's where we've got to find a way to understand what this is. And you know what, Dan Gavitt? If the NCAA's going to put their name on it, you're going to be forced to tell us what is in that computer software. When you hit go for the first time.

And that's where that's where I've come back to this. There's some sort of expected analytic in this, Adam, that three weeks in before they hit the go button on that computer for the first time. They have to.

And I told Bonner this and I'm now starting to tell you publicly. Okay. They put them in order from one to 350 something one time and then let the software dictate the rest of the year. Right. Okay.

So what do they use to put them in order for the first time? Yeah, they shouldn't do that. Shouldn't do that. It's a hard thing to do. I mean, I don't understand how Ken Palm comes out with a ranking before the season starts.

I've never figured never been able to figure that out. I don't trust him more than I trust this network. Well, I do. I agree with you, but I still don't understand 30 dollars a year subscription, but I trust it.

I still don't understand. It's worth it. Bartortvic is free Ken Palm. That's what I call Bartortvic. Evan, Maya does a great job, too. They all do a great job. But the ACC has and you know what I mean by this? Because the Southeastern Conference did it 15 years ago when they hired somebody. Remember, they brought what? Mike Trangisi in to help formulate their basketball. So it's okay.

Jim Phillips, Paul Brazo, guys I truly respect. How do we get this thing right? Because if they're going to use this to measure it.

Then we need to know how it works. See, here's the other element. Maybe we're not going to talk basketball at all, Western. The other element of this conversation that. Has been kicking through my head is that I think for those of us who have a platform, whether it's me here speaking to 15 people in the state of North Carolina or the Joes who are on after me in Raleigh or Mark Packer, all of that. I really think that we don't like when the SEC toots their horn, when the Big Ten toots their horn. So we go out of our way to be, you know what? I'm just going to call it as I see it. I'm not going to sit here and try to pump the tires of people that don't deserve having their tires pumped.

But maybe maybe that's an us problem. Maybe we should get over that. And this is I want to be as honest as I can. I think that the league has been disrespected. I believe last year matters. I believe getting three teams into the elite eight and two into the final four. I believe that matters. And I believe those things should matter, even though the committee says they shouldn't. And even though the people who the Leonardi's, the Jerry Palms of the world say it doesn't, it should because past performance does indicate future results in many cases, especially with basketball.

Well, and I don't disagree with you on that and the landscape. But here's the reasoning for just looking at why it's been the way it's been is because we got through the first year of the net with the three number ones in 19. Right. But after that, it all went downhill slowly but surely. Now, we we had the savior run last month of last year.

Right. Where the three in the elite eight, the two in the final four and Carolina hit the go button. And we had all that Notre Dame winning out of the first four, you know, that kind of thing. But the reality of it is you're going to have to find out what the methodology is.

And as much as the game has changed in the last five years, what have you done to change with it? And I think, you know, have we hit some bad streets yet? Nobody thought Florida State would be this bad.

OK, I mean, it's bad. And I heard all about the injuries and everything else in Tallahassee. But you got one win in quad one. Now, you know, Georgia Tech, Louisville. We didn't think they'd be great. I wasn't sure what to expect out of Syracuse and I wasn't sure what to expect out of Boston College. Everybody else in the front nine from Virginia to Clemson at 81.

I kind of thought those teams would all be pretty good. And, you know, you're telling me Clemson's out. But the only reasoning you can give me for Clemson being out is they've got three quad four losses. They do have bad losses. Well, they I mean, but they've also got three quad one wins. I know. And, you know, that's that's as many as Virginia Tech and behind Virginia, Miami and Pitt.

It's not too bad. No, I'm with you. But the league is the league has got to look at itself and say, OK, if the game has changed in terms of determining it, what is that change and how do we reflect that change? Because I do believe that it's thirty five one game seasons, to quote the old football coaches, Adam. You know, to paraphrase the old football coaches. Yes, one. But the league has got to understand that these games in November and December really do count. I have I have to run.

So give me like 10 seconds on this. Maybe 20 conference games isn't the best way to do it. Maybe playing 16. I understand we can't play enough teams twice, but you can't play everybody twice anyway. When you're playing 20, we're not playing 28 conference games. So maybe playing more good non-conference games is better than playing conference games. I have a wild thought that nobody wants to hear.

Let's hear it. I'm playing the 20 conference games because you can't go back on that. Right.

OK. I'm also thinking about playing the big four tournament again. The Venture X card from Capital One gives you premium travel benefits. Perfect for seeing Taylor Swift, the era's tour presented by Capital One.

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How doers get more done. OK. That'd be fun for us here. I'm also thinking about playing not just an ACC SEC challenge.

I'm also thinking about playing designated ACC SEC nonconference games after after January one. Oh, nonconference games within like when when Duke used to play a St. John's or a Georgetown or a UC. I remember. Oh, gosh.

How old am I? Duke played UCLA. Was it the weekend before the Duke Carolina game or the week of the Duke Carolina game? That's insanity. Why can't we keep doing it?

If we're talking about and by the way, last time I heard we were still talking about revenue things and revenue streams. College basketball needs good college basketball. So I'll play the ACC SEC challenge between Thanksgiving and the football championship game, whereas the that's where my bosses want to play it as announced earlier.

But I'm also thinking about playing ACC SEC nonconference games after January one. No question. All right.

Go about the rest of your day, Wester. And this was fun, as always. If I don't speak to you before then, I'll see you in Greensboro two weeks from tomorrow. I look forward to being there. It'll be a real treat. Be looking forward to seeing you and a lot of others. And I hope we have a terrific event, despite what the national pundits are saying. It'll be better than the Big South tournament.

No offense for the Big South. Thanks. Hey, I may actually ride by that title game on Sunday on my way from Clemson to Greensboro. Excellent, sir. I'll take care of it.

See you, man. You got it. Western Adam Gold show. The Venture X card from Capital One gives you premium travel benefits. Perfect for seeing Taylor Swift. The era's tour presented by Capital One.

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