This ACC basketball season began with league officials and coaches confident that at least four, maybe five, men's teams would be among the Top 25 nationally.

So much for those lofty expectations.

When the 12 teams convene in Charlotte Bobcats Arena today to stage the league's 55th tournament, only regular-season champion North Carolina and second-place Duke are bringing legitimate NCAA Final Four hopes. Among the remaining 10 teams, only Clemson is certain of even landing an NCAA bid.

The tournament has changed so drastically that team motives only vaguely resemble those of the pre-expansion era, when a smaller ACC typically placed at least half its teams in the tournament. Not now.

Because of expansion and the league's overall mediocrity, the tournament hasn't mattered this much in years. North Carolina and Duke, for instance, are playing as much for the No. 1 seeding in the NCAA East Regional as for the trophy that will be presented to the ACC champion on Sunday afternoon. Should the two favorites win on Friday and Saturday, the third Carolina-Duke meeting of the season would be most important.

Clemson probably needs to win Friday to receive an NCAA seeding higher than sixth.

The remaining nine teams are playing for NCAA survival -- aiming over the next four days to impress the voters on the NCAA selection committee enough so that they are invited to keep playing.

"What's happened is the teams come in with two agendas," Maryland coach Gary Williams said. "You obviously want to win your conference championship tournament, of course. But you also want to make sure you don't waste that one last opportunity to impress the NCAA committee. It's all so close in the middle of the standings that there's no room for a misstep."

Williams' Terps, Virginia Tech, Miami, Wake Forest and Florida State fall into that category. All five need at least one win, perhaps two, in the ACC Tournament to feel optimistic about their chances.

Carolina and Duke so dominated the league's regular-season race that the other teams were forced to feed off each other for wins. Other than splitting their two games against each other, in league play the Tar Heels lost only to Maryland, and the Blue Devils lost only to Miami and Wake Forest .

"There's just been very little separation," Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg said.

Long gone are the days when an 8-8 or 9-7 conference regular-season record all but assured an ACC team a spot in the NCAA Tournament. The new comfort level is 10 wins, meaning a quick loss in the tournament would mean no worse than a 10-7 record against conference opponents.

For three straight seasons now, the ACC has been living more off its name while mired in a state of mediocrity fed by expansion. With more teams in the middle, there are fewer quality wins to be had to impress the NCAA committee.

A year ago, when Duke finished with an unusual 11 losses, the conference wound up with only two teams -- No. 4 UNC and No. 18 Maryland -- in The Associated Press' final Top 25 poll.

In 2005-06, No. 1 Duke, No. 7 Boston College and No. 10 UNC made the Top 25, but each was eliminated in the second or third round of the NCAA. In 2004-05, the league had four teams in the final AP poll. The season before, it had six.

League coaches are quick to place some blame on the talent drain to the NBA, which almost certainly played a role in this season's problems for Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets would likely have been national contenders if Jarvaris Crittenton and Thaddeus Young, who were freshmen last season, had stayed in school.

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