ACC Teams In Multi-Team Events This Season

Everyone except Duke and Georgia Tech this time around

Ever since Franklin Roosevelt was president nearly a century ago, we’ve become accustomed to communicating with abbreviations, acronyms. During the New Deal, FDR’s 13-year tenure, the U.S. government spun off all sorts of acrimonious entities – wait, wrong word – such as the WPA (Work Progress Administration), the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), the FHA (Federal Housing Authority) and TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority). Some of those labels endure.

These days we see sports leagues like the NFL and NBA, the ACC and SEC, television networks like CBS and ESPN, a lightning rod like the NCAA. We know instantly which group is being discussed. Well, maybe not so precisely as college leagues shape shift, but you get the idea.

Now fans are conversant with NIL – name, image and likeness — and are learning about the MTE –multiple-team event. MTEs have actually been around for awhile, just as for years athletes’ association with schools was commercialized.

There’s probably a good reason why MTEs have become increasingly popular, if only to get a wider taste of non-league competition. Headlined as “college basketball’s best friend” by the Toledo Blade, MTEs can offer up to three games within a 10-day span that count as a single contests within NCAA game limitations. Plus a team gets to enjoy a group trip, bonding at an exotic locale like the Cayman Islands or Hawaii, not to mention Uncasville, Connecticut.

This year all but two of 18 ACC teams participate in an MTE, the exceptions being Duke and Georgia Tech. Seven of those tournaments offer teams three games each. The venerable Maui Invitational, for which the field is curated by Dave Odom, the former Wake Forest head coach (1990-2001), reserves a permanent spot for an ACC squad. This year it’s North Carolina.

Pitt, by contrast, plays twice in the inaugural Greenbrier Tip-Off in West Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains, contested in the Colonial Hall Ballroom at the Greenbrier resort. The West Virginia landmark, visited by 28 presidents and host to six golf courses, is a doorway to the life of the elite that sits on 11,000 acres.

NC State and Cal play twice each in on-campus tournaments, the Wolfpack at San Diego State and Cal at its own Haas Pavilion. Host teams are allowed by NCAA rule to pay for player-prospects to attend. For Cal that’s titanic battles against Air Force, Sacramento State, and Merryhurst.

SMU and Stanford appear in the sprawning Acrisure Invitational, a three-event umbrella tournament that advertises it’s comprised of 21 teams playing 19 games in 14 days at Palm Springs, Ca.

All of the MTEs involving ACC teams will be played between November 21 and 29. Wake faces Florida of the SEC on the 28^th, Thanksgiving Day, in the ESPN Invitational in Florida. Five days later the Deacons visit Texas A&M in the ACC-SEC Challenge.

Meanwhile the NCAA Division I Council agreed to a waiver easing restrictions on MTE participation. Current rules limit each event to a single team per conference and prevent participation in the same event more than once in a four-year period. The men’s and women’s basketball oversight committees already approved a blanket waiver for 2024-25 and plan to review MTE requirements within the year.