Barry Jacobs of the Duke Basketball Report has a very interesting chart of twenty-win seasons by ACC teams since 1980. Twenty wins is a good cutoff point for a good year, since it likely means a team either made the NCAA tourney or made a deep run in the NIT.
While the two titans are, as you’d expect, Duke and UNC with 21 and 23 years out of 26, the next tier is very interesting.
The teams at the next level, all with either 13 or 14 years of success, are Maryland, NC State, Virginia and Wake Forest. It’s easy to only think about programs in terms of where they are right now, but folks forget that Maryland, NC State and Wake Forest all had extended dry periods in the late 80s or 90s. Virgina sucks now, and has for several years, so it’s easy to forget that they were one of the dominant ACC programs for much of the 80s and were consistently good up until Jeff Jones’ teams fell apart in 1996.
Georgia Tech is a bit surprising with only nine good years out of 26 and no one should be surprised to see Clemson and Florida State down at the bottom.