Congrats to Virginia for their win at Cameron. I'm sure that Duke will have their opportunity to avenge the loss. But even with the loss Duke still leads the ACC standings as of now. But,...
Since July 1, 1961, the ACC's bylaws have included the phrase "and the winner shall be the conference champion" in referring to the ACC Tournament, meaning that the conference tournament winner is the only champion of the ACC.
Here's something really interesting. South Carolina(1) has more ACC Championships than Clemson(0) and are now in the SEC. And Maryland has as many ACC Championships as Virginia (3), and they are in the B1G. And Florida State was gifted an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament because of Covid since the Tournament wasn't even played in 2020. There was no ACC Champion in 2020. The ACC does NOT recognize the winner of the ACC regular season as champions.
Duke has the most ACC Championships.(21)
UNC (18)
NC State (10)
GaTech (4)
Wake Forest (4)
The national media wants to acknowledge the regular season team with the best record as "champions" when it's not. The ONLY thing the regular season does is seed the teams for the ACC Tournament in order to award the true ACC Championship.
But isn't the main prize every college basketball season the National Championship? The NCAA crowns the winner of the NCAA Tournament that moniker. Not the best conference regular season winner in any conference. Just the NCAA Tournament winner. And every conference has a post season tournament because of the ACC and its success in gaining NCAA Tournament championships.
Since 2000, the ACC has had 8 total NCAA titles. One more than the Big East in that span.