It's been a few hours since the ACC released the 2016-17 Basketball Schedule, let's take a look at what you may have missed when taking a first look at the schedule.
- Let's welcome Josh Pastner to Georgia Tech and the ACC. You get UNC, Duke, and Louisville as your first 3 conference games.
- That Hartford (12/9) and Harvard (12/7) back-to-back for Boston College is definitely going to confuse people.
- One of my Twitter followers, @LK2Chat pointed out Virginia Tech has exactly zero Saturday home games when students are on campus. Throw in the fact that the Hokies will host Duke when the students are away and things didn't go Virginia Tech's way this year.
- This won't be the year Clemson wins in Chapel Hill, UNC will be in renovated Littlejohn instead.
- Duke leads all teams with 15 Saturday games. It's fitting Syracuse will lead the way on Big Monday as the former Big East school has 4 Monday games.
- UNC leads the away with 23 appearances on ESPN networks, while Pitt shows up most on the new online only ACC Network Extra
- Quick turnarounds in conference play are always difficult. Duke, UNC, Louisville, Miami, and Virginia will have to deal with most often this season. Each will have 3 times where they play 2 games in 3 days in conference play. Wake Forest doesn't face the 2 games in 3 days scenario, while FSU will face it just once.
According to Game Sim's final 2016 rankings, here's who has the strongest 2016-2017 schedule...
| Team | Avg Opponent Rank | Top 25 Opponents | 200+ Opponents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Louisville | 68 | 8 | 3 |
| UNC | 77 | 8 | 3 |
| Pitt | 81 | 10 | 3 |
| Virginia | 84 | 9 | 5 |
| Wake Forest | 87 | 7 | 4 |
| Clemson | 88 | 5 | 3 |
| Duke | 89 | 8 | 4 |
| Boston College | 99 | 5 | 5 |
| FSU | 101 | 7 | 6 |
| Miami | 103 | 5 | 6 |
| Syracuse | 103 | 6 | 7 |
| Georgia Tech | 104 | 5 | 5 |
| Virginia Tech | 108 | 7 | 7 |
| Notre Dame | 110 | 9 | 8 |
| NC State | 113 | 7 | 8 |
