Arguably the biggest testament to the strength of ACC soccer this season came in the form of two separate preseason polls.

Nationally, the No. 7 Terrapin men’s soccer team topped the National Soccer Coaches Association of America/adidas (NSCAA) preseason Top 25.

In conference, however, the Terps weren’t first. They weren’t second, either. Rather, they were stuck in third behind North Carolina and Virginia with not a single first-place vote in the preseason conference coaches poll.

This week, the Terps (1-1) are one of six ACC teams that make up nearly a quarter of the NSCAA’s most recent top 25. The lowest-ranked team, Duke, is No. 19.

“It’s a ridiculous conference,” coach Sasho Cirovski said.

The road to the College Cup this year will likely go through ACC territory — not that it will represent much of a change in recent history.

The conference has had at least two representatives in the College Cup each of the past five seasons.In that span, only two teams — Boston College and N.C. State — have not made it to college soccer’s final weekend at least once.

Friday, the Terps kick off league play in arguably the nation’s deepest conference against Boston College. Fortunately for Cirovski, the conference schedule’s start won’t be as bad as the rest of it will.

After  an 11-win 2008 season in which the Eagles ascended to as high as No. 2 nationally and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, the Eagles are 1-2 this season with losses to unranked Rhode Island and Harvard.

Still, it’s a conference game, which means the Terps are expecting the Eagles’ best.

“Tonight, Sasho was telling us about how every ACC game was going to be a war,” defender Taylor Kemp said. “It’s going to be really competitive. We need to be ready to go.”

The conference isn’t short on talent or prestige, and it’s partly why Kemp made the roughly 1,500-mile journey from his home in Highlands Ranch, Colo. to College Park. He decided midway through the recruiting process he wouldn’t play anywhere else but in ACC country.

“I think they play the best soccer in the country,” Kemp said. “I watched ACC soccer more than anything. I think that it plays the closest to soccer as how I think it should be played.”

If there was a defense ransacked more than the Terps’ this offseason, it was Boston College’s. The Terps return goalkeeper Zac MacMath as the lynchpin of a renovated defense, but the Eagles aren’t as fortunate. They lost All-ACC goalkeeper Chris Brown and all four senior members from a unit that allowed only 0.90 goals a game last season.

“Last week’s games were [against] top-ranked teams, but they were non-regional, non-conference types of games,” Cirovski said. “This week, with the conference matchup, we know that it’s a different type of battle.”

Considering that Friday’s contest might be one of their least grueling in-conference contests, the Terps won’t have to wait long to get a sense of what ACC teams will be pushing them for the most important No. 1 ranking of the year — the one following the final game of the college soccer season.

“Every game’s going to be tough for us,” midfielder Kaoru Forbess said. “That’s what we expect.”

shaffer@umdbk.com