Yes, friends, the holiday season is upon us. The season is well underway, and although the biggest holidays of the year aren't till tounament time in March, the start of conference games is a cause for celebration in December. This season is particularly exciting because of all the changes around the league. With three teams moving from the Big East to the ACC, both conferences have a whole new dynamic. And it doesn't stop there. Those holes in the Big East were filled with teams from Conference USA, who in turn accepted schools from several mid-major leagues. With so many changes to these conference schedules, the landscape of college basketball has been totally redefined. In the ACC, this means the end of the traditional round-robin schedule, in which each team will play every other team twice, once at each school's home venue. With more teams in the league, there's just not enough time in the schedule to play everybody twice. The coaches have made appeals for some of the bigger rivalries to be played twice, but otherwise it's just pot luck as to who you will play only once, and whether it will be home or away.
The same situation has occurred in our CAA, with two new teams entering the conference this year. In fact, the similarities between the ACC and the CAA don't stop there. Both conferences now have twelve teams, including several pairs of in-state and conference rivalries that are intense year to year. Both conferences are known especially for their parity. Besides one or two standout teams and one or two cupcakes, anybody can beat anybody else in a given game within these conferences. This is a mark of a great conference because it creates true competition for dominance in the league, and a more significant sense of accomplishment for winning. Speaking of winning, both of these conferences play intense non-conference schedules, and they win. Even the teams at the bottom of both conference beat the teams they play outside of conference. This is another sign of a great conference because it shows the superiority of the teams in these conferences over their respective rival conferences (Big Ten for ACC and So-Con for CAA). Most importantly, though, is that these two are basketball conferences. The CAA schools don't even have football teams, so basketball is all we have, and the ACC just doesn't care about football except for Florida State, VT, and Miami. For these reasons and more, the CAA has been refered to as the ACC of Mid-Majors, or the Poor Man's ACC. UNCW's Trask Coliseum is known as the Cameron of the CAA for it's intensity and difficulty for incoming teams that mirrors Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium. But that didn't happen by accident. Most of UNCW's students were raised deep in ACC country, living and breathing college basketball all their lives, and whether they're Duke, Wake, Carolina, or State fans, they bring the passion and intensity of ACC ball to UNCW. Other schools have seen this in Trask and have begun to incorporate ACC style fandom into their own courts and arenas.
So remember the little guys this conference season. Mid-Majors make college basketball what it is. As conference allegiences shift, the definition of a Mid-Major changes as well. So check out www.collegeinsider.com for all the latest Mid-Major news, including the Mid-Major Top 25 to keep up with UNCW's climb up the ranks.
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