Nice effort by Clemson and Duke over about a 16-hour time span.  Those coaches who whined about the ACC getting jobbed with only four NCAA bids and how the league is so wonderful yada-yada-yada?  Their words ring as hollow as the echoes from rim-clangers Blue Devils and Tigers tossed up during their early exits.
  These were the ACC’s Nos. 2 and 3 teams, remember.  But one-trick Duke had no fallback when the treys weren’t dropping—the main reason it went 6-5 down the stretch, nearly was a first-round out against Belmont and was a fairly easy mark for West Virginia yesterday.
  As for Clemson, without turnovers to fuel its transition game, its offense could go clunky in a heartbeat.  It was outscrapped by Villanova, shot poorly, didn’t get to the line (where it stinks anyhow) and evaporated.
  And now?  John Swofford better hope UNC beats Arkansas today (Miami losing to Texas is practically a foregone conclusion).  Otherwise, the ACC would be without a Sweet 16 entry for the first time since 1979—when Black Sunday at N.C. State’s Reynolds Coliseum claimed UNC and Duke as victims in their NCAA openers.  Everyone said the ACC was a worldbeater then, too.