ACC Teams On The Road Again, And In The Worst Kind Of Way

 DURHAM, NC - MARCH 05: Cameron Crazies and fans of the Duke Blue Devils react during the game against the Wake Forest Demon Deacons in the second half at Cameron Indoor Stadium on March 5, 2019 in Durham, North Carolina. Duke won 71-70. | Photo by Lance King/Getty Images

They won three of the last five national championships. Between them they finished six times with a piece of first place during the last five ACC regular seasons and finished by winning four ACC Tournaments.

There’s no doubt Duke, North Carolina and Virginia are the contemporary powers in the ACC, the Cavaliers having shouldered their way into the league’s first rank. Members of the trio don’t lose much within the conference, even more seldom at home.

That prowess on their home floors provides a quick measure of schedule difficulty for other ACC clubs. The more you have to play at Cameron, the Dean Dome and JPJ, the more losses you can expect to write into your league record.

Last year Duke, UNC and UVa combined to lose eight ACC games during the regular season. Five were to each other.

Only twice in 2019 did the triumvirate lose on their home courts to the other dozen conference squads: Louisville routed Carolina by 31 on Jan. 12, a game that lit a fire under the Tar Heels, and Duke fell in overtime to Syracuse after losing Tre Jones to a shoulder injury early in the first half.

The Blue Devils also lost at Virginia Tech near the end of February without Zion Williamson.

This year three teams -- Boston College, NC State and Notre Dame -- share the challenge of playing on the courts of all three league powers. BC and NCSU, plus Virginia Tech and Wake Forest, face the big boys five out of a possible six times this season.

The unlucky three-time road sacrifices last year were Louisville and Miami.

Georgia Tech and Syracuse venture once each to the ACC’s most predictably hazardous ground, the Yellow Jackets at the Smith Center and the Orange at Charlottesville. This is the second straight season Jim Boeheim’s schedule was graced in this way.

Clemson, like the Jackets, has the fewest meetings with the top three. Unfortunately for the Tigers, one of their two road contests against the übermenschen is slated for Chapel Hill, where their program has never won in a series dating to the 1926 season. This will be Clemson’s 60^th visit to UNC.