Ngl, I'm thinking about mapping out how we can win the ACC.
Getting to the ACC championship game would be ahead of schedule imo. Imo if we are the GTech bull**** away from being the ACC champ representative, this would definitely be a successful season.
But if you want the actual path, it seems actually decently difficult. FSU is basically guaranteed in the ACCCG. The other spot is between Us, UNC, DUke, and Louisville.
TL;DR - root for:
1) we Win out
2) UNC and Duke drop 3 conference games
3) Louisville wins out except for us.
- OR -
1) we Win out
2) Duke beat UNC (but want UNC to win out after that)
3) Duke lose to Louisville or UVA (but want Duke to win out after that)
4) Louisville to have 3 Conference losses.
ISo we obviously need to go undefeated - which would give Louisville their 2nd conference loss, tying us even if they won the rest of their game, and we'd have the head to head over them. So ideally obviously we just have a tie between us and Louisville at only 2 losses in conference and Duke and UNC have 3. This would basically require UNC to lose to Duke and Clemson. But even if Duke lost to Louisville, they'd still have to lose to one of Wake, UVA, or Pitt... probably not likely unless Riley Leonard is still out. That situation is by far the clearest cut way for us to get in though.
The other situation is a 3 way tie. The tie breaker we'd want to go in our favor is Win% against common opponents. We definitely don't want a 3 way tie between us, UNC, and Louisville because the common opponents are UVA, NCSt, and GTech. We have a loss to GTech so we don't want that. If it were a 3 way tie between us, UNC, and Duke the common opponents are Clemson, UVA, and NCSt. This is favorable because UVA beat UNC. However to even get to that tie breaker it would require UNC to have lost to Duke. If that happens and Us, Duke, and UNC all have 2 conference losses but UNC lost to Duke and UVA, the win% against common opponents would actually eliminate UNC first. Then it is a 2 way tie between us and Duke. From there the tie breaker would again be win% against common opponents. Common opponents between us and Duke are Clemson, UVA, NCSt, UNC, FSU, and Louisville. Assuming we won out (only way to end with 2 losses) We'd only have 1 loss to those opponents. Luckily Duke already has a loss to FSU. So if they just lose 1 more of those games, we win the tie breaker. The best opportunity for that is this upcoming week when Duke plays Louisville and Riley Leonard is hurt. The only other opportunity is UVA... So pretty complicated. But I don't see a way we win a 4 way tie breaker tbh.