The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is historically one of the most dominant conferences in college basketball, with the Duke Blue Devils, North Carolina Tar Heels, Virginia Cavaliers, and Syracuse Orange among the schools that often make appearances in the NCAA Tournament.

This season, however, has been a different story for the ACC. The conference does have Cooper Flagg, the consensus best player in college basketball and the projected No. 1 overall pick in the upcoming NBA Draft, who helped Duke land a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The rest of the schools, however, have left a lot to be desired.

Only four ACC teams wound up cracking the NCAA Tournament, and an argument can (and probably should) be made that four teams were too many. The Tar Heels squeaking in as a No. 11 seed was possibly the most controversial decision that the committee made on Selection Sunday.

And early returns from the ACC in the NCAA Tournament have been far from pretty, to say the least.

Two of the four ACC teams that made the NCAA Tournament played on Thursday, and both of them suffered excruciatingly frustrating losses.

The Louisville Cardinals faced a tough Creighton Bluejays team in a highly-anticipated 8 vs. 9 matchup, but they had the good fortune of playing in their home state at Rupp Arena. That did not matter, unfortunately, as they were thoroughly outplayed by Creighton.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the Clemson Tigers, the 5-seed in the Midwest Region, put together arguably the most embarrassing performance of the tourney thus far. The Tigers scored a grand total of 13 first-half points and trailed 12-seed McNeese State by 18 points. Let me rephrase: The Tigers trailed by more points than they were able to score in 20 minutes of action. That's hard to do!

They wound up clawing their way back in the second half, proving that they were more than capable of avoiding this major upset, but they lost by two points thanks to their no-show in the first 20 minutes. The Tigers were the ACC's second-highest-seeded team in the tournament, and they wound up being a one-and-done.

Louisville and Clemson losing on Thursday means that the conference's record in NCAA Tournament play is 0-2.

It all comes down to two arch-rivals, Duke and UNC, to save face for the ACC. Given UNC's tough first-round matchup and tough path in general as an 11-seed, it's really up to Duke to try and make a deep run and prove that the ACC was better than most think it was.

Duke's first-round matchup shouldn't be too much of a problem with a date with Mount St. Mary's on the horizon, but how deep they can go in the tournament could come down to Cooper Flagg's health. Flagg suffered an ankle sprain in Duke's ACC Tournament opener, and he's been out ever since. The Blue Devils were able to win the title without him, but the NCAA Tournament is another ballgame. They'll need their star playing and 100 percent healthy to win.

Fortunately, Flagg does not carry an injury designation ahead of Friday's matchup, clearing him to play. How he performs, however, remains to be seen.