Senior forward Nik Caner-Medley clutches his ankle in the Terps’ loss that likely knocked them out of an NCAA bid. The Terps missed the NCAA tournament for the second straight year.

Waiting for yesterday’s NCAA tournament selection show to come on, Terrapin men’s basketball coach Gary Williams passed some of the time watching Duke’s thrilling two-point win against Boston College in the ACC championship.

“That was the best game I saw on television,” Williams concluded.

But even after this weekend’s 11-game showcase in Greensboro concluded so competitively, the ACC had to be deemed a loser yesterday, as only four of the league’s members were chosen for the NCAA tournament.

The league put out a stat sheet at Greensboro Coliseum boasting how most teams in conference history with at least eight wins have earned NCAA at-large bids, but when yesterday’s selections came in, both the Terps (19-12, 8-8 ACC regular season) and Florida State (19-9, 9-7) watched their bubbles burst.

“I guess for the ACC, even though we had the third best RPI of any conference in the country and defeated the Big Ten for the seventh straight time in the Big Ten ACC challenge, going 8-8 didn’t get us much consideration from the people who pick the teams,” Williams said. “It used to be that you were rewarded for who you played. I think that was one of the reasons the ACC always got a number of teams in.”

Williams has continually said this season that he didn’t think the ACC did as much as other conferences in promoting the overall strength of the league. While they had the second-best non-conference winning percentage of all leagues (79.9 percent), the ACC had only four teams invited to the NCAA tournament (Duke, North Carolina, Boston College and N.C. State).

The Big East got a record eight members into the 65-team field, the Southeastern and Big Ten conferences each got six and the Missouri Valley Conference had four chosen.

“We looked at the ACC,” said selection committee chairman Craig Littlepage, who also serves as Virginia’s director of athletics. “We made our selections on the basis of the teams, not on the conferences they represented.”

Other surprises that sent the Terps to their second straight NIT were Air Force of the Mountain West and George Mason of the Colonial Athletic Association earning at-large bids.

Given the chance, the Terps feel they could beat many of those mid-major teams, who don’t play nearly as strong a schedule as the ACC teams.

“There’s no question about it,” senior Nik Caner-Medley said. “We beat George Mason by [24 points] last year, so that’s about all I have to say about that.”

Williams said the ACC tried to convice its basketball coaches that conference expansion would increase the number of teams invited to the national tournament each year. That certainly worked for the Big East (which got half of its teams into the big dance), but not the ACC (which got only one-third).

Saying he had “empathy” for Florida State, Williams ultimately couldn’t be certain whether the 10-person selection committee actually picked the best 34 at-large teams in the country.

“If they went strictly by numbers, no,” Williams said. “I have no idea why we have four teams in the NCAA tournament this year.”

Contact reporter David Selig at dseligdbk@gmail.com.