In so many ways though UConn fits the ACC. For most of the conference, it is basketball first. It reunites us with old rivals like BC, Syracuse, Pitt, Virginia Tech, Louisville and adds schools we have played a number of times like Carolina and NC State, Duke and Virginia.
There is all this talk about Florida State and Clemson leaving for the SEC but that assumes the SEC would take them against the wishes of Florida and South Carolina. Virginia and UNC to the Big? 2 programs whose identity is A. Southern more thanMidwestern B. Very intimately tied to the ACC in a way you need to experience to understand, especially UNC. UNC basketball without Duke is BC hockey without BU or Red Sox baseball without the Yankees or Michigan without Ohio State. We don’t have those kings of rivalries so we don’t really understand their depth. Plus you think AAC travel was brutal. Yikes!