That special time of the year is upon us once again. Time for middle school teachers all across the state of North Carolina to stop teaching, turn on the TV, and allow their pupils to watch college basketball. Time for high school students to sneak a radio in to class and listen to their favorite team play as their biology teacher drones on in the background. Time for college students to skip class altogether so as not to miss a second of game action. It’s ACC Tournament time, and it doesn’t get any better than that…at least, not until the first round of the NCAA Tournament. In order to get everyone in the mood for this weekend’s festivities, Carolina Water Cooler is pleased to provide information about this year’s field that you won’t find anywhere else.

In the early ‘90’s it became popular to refer to the Thursday night play-in game between the eighth and ninth seeds as the “Les Robinson Invitational” due to the fact that N.C. State seemingly always took part in this game while Les Robinson was their coach. That nickname slowly faded once Herb Sendek took over as head coach of the Pack, leading them to a seven seed or better every year after 1998. This season, first year coach Sidney Lowe has managed to carry on the Wolfpack’s new tradition of avoiding the 8/9 game by guiding his team to the tenth seed in this year’s tournament. The biggest danger for N.C. State in their first round game against seventh seeded Duke will be their lack of depth. A couple of unintentional elbows to the face and the Wolfpack will have to rely on Farnold Degand as their primary go-to guy.

So who replaced the Wolfpack as the perennial participant in the 8/9 game? Look no further than Clemson, South Carolina. In the 2007 tournament, for the seventh consecutive year, the Tigers will take part in this prestigious match-up (earning the eight seed and the right to play Florida State). In the 2004, 2005, and 2006 tournaments, Clemson entered the tournament seeded ninth. If you think that Clemson against Florida State seems like a familiar match-up in the 8/9 game, that’s because these two teams played one another in the play-in game in 2001, 2002, and 2003. 2000 was the last time Clemson wasn’t involved in the 8/9 game, though not for lack of trying…the Tigers finished the season dead last in the then nine team conference. However, 2000 was the final year of that odd tournament format which featured 7/8 and 1/9 games on Thursday, with the one seed then receiving a bye on Friday. Very peculiar arrangement, that was.

2007 marks the second season of the twelve team ACC. This means that on Thursday four teams get to sit and watch as the other eight battle one another just to get the chance to play a team better than them on Friday. This season the four schools receiving a first round bye are North Carolina, Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Boston College. Of those four, two of them weren’t even in the ACC half a decade ago. Of course, if proponents of expansion point to the success of Virginia Tech and Boston College in their first few years in the ACC, they also have to reference Miami and just how big an embarrassment they are to the conference. We’re dangerously close to the point where people can argue that DePaul would have been a better choice than the Hurricanes.

Schools located in the state of North Carolina have won 45 of the 53 ACC tournaments in history. Wake Forest is the weakest link of these Big Four schools, having only managed four measly titles (the other three schools are in double digits). Maryland and Georgia Tech are each only one title behind the Demon Deacons, while the remaining two titles were won by Virginia and South Carolina. That’s right, South Carolina has more ACC titles than SEC titles. And also more ACC titles than Clemson.

This year’s tournament will be played in Tampa, Florida. The good news about the tournament being played in Tampa is that most of the people who live in Florida don’t really care about the ACC Tournament, so tickets aren’t as difficult to find as they have been in the past. The bad news about the tournament being played in Tampa is that most of the people who live in Florida don’t really care about the ACC Tournament, which proves that the event should be played in Greensboro every year from now until Clemson takes home the title. In other words, forever.