Clemson Men’s Basketball: When is the ACC Tournament?

Time flies sometimes. I look at the calendar and see we have just over a week left in February and I wonder where the time has gone so far this year.

Then again, March brings March Madness and brackets, so there is always a reason to be excited about all the basketball we will get to digest in the next couple of months.

Clemson Men’s Basketball has six regular season contests remaining between now and March 9th before they begin the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament.

The ACC Tournament will begin on March 12th. It will be held in Capital One Arena in Washington, DC. The championship game will be on March 16th.

The tournament will follow the same format as in recent years. Seeds 10 – 15 will begin play on Tuesday. The three winners will advance to Wednesday and join seeds 5 – 9.

Seeds 1 – 4 get the coveted ‘double bye’ and begin play on Thursday in the quarterfinals. The semifinals will be on Friday and the championship is scheduled for 8:30 PM Saturday.

The ACC Tournament is evolving as the conference expands west

This will be the final season of the ACC Tournament when every team will be invited. Starting next season, the conference is adding California, SMU, and Stanford, which will bring the total to 18 teams in basketball.

Rather than expand the tournament further, the ACC has decided to limit participants to the top 15 teams in the standings.

The bottom three teams in the standings will not participate in any postseason play, which is a disappointing development. One of the beauties of NCAA basketball has been that every team gets a chance to play in their conference tournament with a shot to win it and advance to the Big Dance.

While it isn’t likely a team that finishes the ACC regular season at 16 – 18 would somehow win the tournament, it is disappointing that they won’t have an opportunity to try.