With the addition of Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Notre Dame, the Atlantic Coast Conference swelled to 15 schools for the 2013-14 basketball season.
Wednesday’s 2013 ACC Operation Basketball was the first ACC experience for the players from those schools, but if there were any nerves about being in an unfamiliar environment, the players did a good job of masking any insecurity.
For players like Notre Dame’s Eric Atkins, the room wasn’t completely filled with strangers, as the Maryland natives had friends on other ACC teams.
Atkins is particularly close with Duke’s Tyler Thornton and Quinn Cook and said he talks with Thornton at least once a week.
Atkins and the other players from former Big East schools were excited to move on the ACC, but were a little hesitant about what exactly was waiting for them in their new conference.
“You don’t know really what to expect until you actually play,” Pittsburgh’s Lamar Patterson said. “Like I said, at the end of the day you really just have to play basketball, being in a new conference seeing these new teams, change is always good and we’re not coming alone so we’ll have familiar faces with us like Syracuse and Notre Dame and Louisville.”
For Atkins, leaving the Big East means leaving behind an intense Connecticut rivalry. But Atkins said he believes this year’s game with Maryland will replace the UConn rivalry in his mind.
“We had a rivalry with UConn and it came down to the wire every single year,” he said.
But at least for one year, Atkins said he’ll have a personal conference rivalry to look forward to.
“For me, it’s Maryland, just because I know I’m going back home and playing against them. I just know my emotions are really going to be flowing in that game. That goes for Jerian (Grant) and I. Maryland is going to be that type of game for me.
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski wasn’t concerned about a lack of rivalries with the introduction of the new league members.
“Those of us that were worried about losing tradition and rivalries, I think the ACC has been one-up on everybody in basketball, and we’ll have instant rivalries, to develop a Duke-Syracuse or Notre Dame, and it’s not just us.
“It’ll be instant rivalries. That’s why I think our conference for basketball is way ahead of anybody.”
For the three teams leaving the Big East for the ACC, the transition also means adjusting to a different style of play than what the players were accustomed to in their former league.
To Atkins, moving to the ACC means facing more uptempo offenses like North Carolina’s signature pitch-forward outlet pass to start a run-and-gun offense.
Krzyzewski said the ACC doesn’t have one signature style of play.
“I’ve never felt our conference has a style of play,” he said. “I think when you’re really good, you have styles of play within a conference.”
The mood throughout the duration of media day was warm toward the newly added members as they were welcomed into the folds of the unexpected, and in some ways, unplanned super conference.
“For basketball purists and traditionalists we are, to come up with this, I know it wasn’t the focal point or even a probably an agenda item when they were talking about expansion, but it turned out that we want a huge hand here,” Krzyzewski said.
“I think we fell into something that’s going to be remarkable.”
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