My Mount ACCmore
ACC Nation is narrowing a list of 32 key figures in the Atlantic Coast Conference down to four. Those four will be our Mount ACCmore, much like the presidents on Mount Rushmore.
So, who do you think should be honored? Vote for a winner in each of our regionals - you have until July 26 - so we can decide the final eight. Listeners and blog readers will choose two of the faces to go on Mount ACCmore, while Chris and I will each choose one as well, making four.
I've come up with the four I would choose. I'll list my choices over the next few days. Let's start with my first selection, Dean Smith.
I wanted to take one coach, and one coach only, and believe me, it wasn't all the easy. I thought about football coaches like Bobby Bowden and Danny Ford, but in the end decided that the ACC is still a basketball conference and, therefore, one of the faces on Mount ACCmore had to be that of a basketball coach. I narrowed it down to Smith, Everett Case, and Mike Krzyzewski.
Case is the father of the ACC basketball tournament and is pretty much responsible for turning college basketball into the most popular sport in North Carolina.
Coach K has led his team to 10 Final Fours, winning three national titles. Duke has also won twelve ACC regular-season titles and ten ACC tournament titles under Krzyzewski.
But it's tough to deny what Smith has done. Not only is he the winningest college coach of all-time, but he won two national titles and is the innovator of several things we still see used today, like the point zone and the run-and-jump defensive sets and the four-corners offense.
So, Dean Smith would be one of the faces on my Mount ACCmore.
-Patrick Hite