CHICAGO — Somewhere along the line, the right side of the NCAA Tournament bracket turned into an ACC tournament encore.

The only difference, really, is that the games aren’t being sponsored by New York Life.

“Our league is tough. I mean you can’t … I learned a long time ago that it’s a foolish game to say one league is better than the other,” Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said of the Atlantic Coast Conference, after his team beat Gonzaga on Friday night.

“There’s just too many variables. I think the top conferences are very, very good, and it’s an imperfect system to say, well, they did better in the NCAA Tournament. I mean you can use that, but I don’t know. It’s very difficult.”

Boeheim’s right, there are way too many factors in play to solely rank conferences based on NCAA Tournament results, so here’s what we can all agree on: The ACC can claim four teams in the Elite Eight and has fully monopolized one of the two roads to the national championship game in Houston. Tenth-seeded Syracuse (22-13, 9-9 ACC) and top-seeded Virginia (29-7, 13-5) will square off in the Midwest regional final in the United Center at 6:09 p.m. on Sunday. Sixth-seeded Notre Dame and top-seeded North Carolina will play in the East Regional final in Philadelphia at 8:49 p.m. The winner of the two games will then meet in the Final Four, and the winner of that will represent the conference in the national championship game. Just like that.

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And while the conference’s depth and success has helped all four of these teams to this point, it’s been especially important for Syracuse. The Tournament’s unlikely contender, even if the biggest surprise was that the Orange made it all. A team that came into the year with a mix of moving parts and used a gauntlet of a conference schedule to turn those parts into the only double-digit seed still standing.

“There’s no question that our league has prepared us,” SU assistant Mike Hopkins, who coached in its 0-4 start to conference play, said Saturday. “It kind of gave you those bumps and bruises that you get when you learn to ride a bike. But when you learn to ride it’s a great thing and you see these guys playing with a lot of confidence and believing.”

That Syracuse has been the biggest benefactor of its run through this year’s ACC — more than the Tar Heels, Cavaliers and Fighting Irish — would probably be contested by most of the players and coaches involved. Hopkins wasn’t willing to say so. UVA head coach Tony Bennett said every team, young or more experienced, needs to be tested hard to be successful. It’d be very surprising if Roy Williams and Mike Brey didn’t say the same.

But if you consider the way Syracuse entered this season, it’s reasonable to say that the Orange really needed that push. Two freshmen playing starters’ minutes with a third rounding out the rotation off the bench. Michael Gbinije starting his first season as a full-time point guard. Starting center Dajuan Coleman returning from a 22-month recovery from two knee surgeries. Tyler Roberson becoming SU’s depended-upon rebounder after Rakeem Christmas thrived with that responsibility a year ago.

Of the Orange’s current seven-man rotation, only Trevor Cooney’s role is about the same as it was last season. So there have expectedly been kinks to work out all season. Two games against North Carolina (both losses), three games against Pittsburgh (all losses), a road game at Louisville (loss), a road game at Duke (signature win), and so on, forced SU to grow fast or fail even faster.

It’s now clear, more than ever, which path it chose. It’s also fitting that ACC play, probably the seminal reason the Orange received an at-large Tournament bid, is now what separates it from the Final Four. But Syracuse prepared for this test by taking it more than two months ago. By taking it all season, really. By having no choice but to learn on the fly and parlay that dilemma into one of its biggest strength.

“I think it was a huge help for this team to be tested so much all year,” Roberson said Saturday. “We needed that. I think all teams need that, but it helped us because we may have not all been used to our roles and we just had to figure it out while playing really good teams. We’re ready, more than anything we’re just ready for anything.”

Jesse Dougherty is a Senior Staff Writer at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at jcdoug01@syr.edu or @dougherty_jesse.

Published on March 26, 2016 at 7:11 pm