When An ACC Winning Streak Is (Really) Good News

A certain number of wins more or less suggests a strong chance at the Final Four

No team specifically sets out to mount an impressive winning streak. The goal is to win every game, and then, when defeats inevitably come, to win as many games as possible after that.

Win 20 straight games, and if you’re part of an ACC men’s basketball program, chances are excellent you’ve got a Final Four or better in your immediate future.

Duke got to 16 consecutive wins this year, a run of excellence that established these Blue Devils among the nation’s elite, only to fall at Clemson last weekend. Tough, physical, veteran teams historically provide painful tests for the Devils, from West Virginia in the 2008 NCAAs to Villanova in 2009 to Tennessee in 2023 to Clemson in regular-season ACC play the other night.

Brad Brownell’s Tigers figured to mount a formidable challenge, and they did. But the end of a winning streak can come against any opponent, any time. Just think back to 2014, when Syracuse burst onto the ACC scene with 25 wins in a row, only to fall in overtime at home to a Boston College squad that finished 8-24.

When it comes to winning streaks, I think of my grandfather’s variation on an old cautionary admonition.

“Don’t count your chickens before the autumn,” he warned, presumably awaiting the passage of a growing season before counting a chick as a mature hen capable of hatching her own eggs. Having been beaten and whipped by Polish police – the scars remained vivid on his back more than 50 years later – my grandfather learned not to anticipate a bright outcome (or painless freedom) until it was achieved.

And so, while the ’25 Duke squad made a run at 20 straight victories, it failed to reach an ACC stratosphere almost guaranteed to presage NCAA Tournament success.

Sixteen ACC teams posted at least 20 straight wins in any season, or across several seasons, since the league’s advent in 1953-54. Of those streaks, a dozen involved or yielded a Final Four visit (75.0 percent).

Nearly half of the streaks (6) include NCAA championships – undefeated UNC in 1957; NC State in 1974 and early 1975 (the ’73 Wolfpack also was undefeated, but on probation and barred from appearing in the NCAAs or NIT); Duke in 1991, 1992, and 2001; and Duke starting in 2010 and continuing into 2011. Virginia won the NIT title in 1980 behind freshman Ralph Sampson.

In all, seven 20-win runs were made by Blue Devil squads (43.8 percent of the longest ACC streaks).

With or without an NCAA title, only three streaks of 20 or more wins were achieved by an ACC squad in this century – Duke from 2001 to 2002 (22), Duke 2010 to 2011 (25), and that 2014 Syracuse run in 2014. That proved the former Big East program’s highwater mark to date in the conference.

Oddly, the 2014 Syracuse streak remains invisible to the casual observer – it’s never been listed among “Consecutive Games Won-All Games” in an ACC media guide.