Jim Phillips - ACC to meet about changing men's hoops narrative

GREENVILLE, S.C. — ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told ESPN on Saturday that he will meet with his league's men's basketball coaches and athletic directors as soon as the season ends to discuss ways to be more «proactive» and «aggressive» in changing the narrative surrounding the conference.

The ACC got only five bids this season to the men's NCAA tournament, a big disappointment to Phillips and to those inside his league. He remains steadfast in his belief that Clemson and North Carolina should have made the tournament.

Although conferences such as the Big Ten and SEC got more bids (eight each), the ACC remains standing with Miami advancing to the Elite Eight.

«We have to portray ourselves in a different way, and maybe it's our scheduling, maybe it's our providing information back to the committee, but we're going to be aggressive in how we look at it — but we're also going to be proactive,» Phillips said. «We feel the narrative hasn't been quite right the last two years. We're going to try to do something about that in the offseason.

»I get it, I've been on the men's selection committee. I've been on the women's committee. It's a hard assignment, and so we're going to try to make it easier for them from an ACC standpoint to make sure we're structured and set up in a way where we will have more teams in the tournament in the future based on merit."

The same thing happened to the ACC last season, when the league also received five bids. This is the first time since the league expanded to 15 teams in 2013 that it has gone back-to-back seasons with only five tournament bids. Eight ACC teams made the women's tournament.

Phillips says he believes the men's basketball selection committee has become too reliant on the NET