Tyler Lydon and Syracuse lost a nail-biter to Pittsburgh, an entertaining game that masked the diminished atmosphere of the ACC tournament. (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

Once upon a time, when Larry Dunlap, the longtime public address announcer at Greensboro Coliseum, introduced the starting lineups for the first game of the ACC tournament, he would say, “Welcome to the greatest tournament in basketball.”

Hyperbolic, perhaps, but not that far off base. For more than 40 years, there was never a public sale of tickets, and every seat was filled for every game. Every tournament contest — or so it seemed — was played with the kind of burning intensity that makes college basketball special.

In 1980, when Maryland lost the ACC tournament championship to Duke in the infamous “undercut” game, Coach Lefty Driesell stood in a corner of his team’s locker room and shook his head, seeing all his players in tears.

“I wish they’d save that emotion for next week,” he said. “But I understand how they feel.”

Those days are long gone. Never was that more evident than Wednesday afternoon at Verizon Center. It wasn’t just that the Pittsburgh-Syracuse game began with the building half-empty; it wasn’t even that there were fewer points in the first three minutes (two) than stoppages (six) because the shot clock was malfunctioning.

[ACC tournament is far from a hot ticket in opening sessions]

“Same for both teams,” Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim said of the clock malfunctions. Then he grinned. “Must have been Georgetown’s clock. Blame it on Georgetown. Write that, and then they’ll hate me more.”

Chances are most Georgetown fans fondly remember Boeheim these days, just as they remember the days when the Big East was still the Big East. Now, seven former Big East teams are part of the ACC 2.0.

Which is why those fans who showed up to watch Pitt-Syracuse — perhaps the only game in the tournament with real postseason implications since Pitt’s win probably wrapped up an NCAA bid and Syracuse’s 72-71 loss may consign it to the National Invitation Tournament — were treated to the utterly ridiculous specter of Derrick Coleman, a former Syracuse all-American, being interviewed in the stands during a TV timeout as an “ACC legend.”

[Big East’s echoes lingered as Pitt and Syracuse duked it out in ACC tournament]

Coleman, of course, never played in the ACC and certainly never played in the ACC tournament. But with the expansion of the ACC to 47 teams (okay, 15; it just feels like 47), the league is trying to sell the notion that the “legends” it names each year are, in fact, ACC legends. Forget the fact that seven of the 15 legends in this year’s class never played in the ACC or in this event.

Which may explain why Coleman, during his interview, talked fondly about playing against Pitt’s designated legend Charles Smith and remembering the days the ACC tournament was played in “Greenville.”

Football-driven conference expansion has done awful things to college athletics but especially to basketball.

When the ACC was an eight-team conference with a pure round-robin schedule, the regular season title truly meant something. Even after Florida State became the ninth team in the league in 1991, it was still a round-robin, and the one extra tournament game, while the subject of derision, changed little. The ACC tournament still had great meaning.

“Intellectually we all understand that next week [the NCAA tournament] is more important,” Dean Smith, North Carolina’s legendary former coach, once said. “But when you’re playing teams you’ve already played at least twice, you can’t help but be emotionally involved in the games.”

Of course teams frequently play each other only once in the ACC these days, and the tournament takes five days to play. By the time North Carolina, Notre Dame, Virginia and Miami show up Thursday, six teams will have gone home. The only reason it isn’t seven is because the only Louisville representative here is another (non-)ACC legend, Darrell Griffith. The rest of the Cardinals are home, sitting out a self-imposed postseason ban.

Louisville replaced Maryland in the conference last season, joining a slew of Big East teams that had already jumped that ship, including Syracuse and Pitt and — earlier — Virginia Tech, Miami, Boston College and Notre Dame.

A year ago, Syracuse was absent from Greensboro — not Greenville — sitting out its own self-imposed ban. No doubt the ACC presidents are thrilled that two of their new brethren have been under NCAA investigation. Of course, so is North Carolina, so the new guys should feel comfortable.

Expansion has been an ongoing embarrassment for the ACC. On Tuesday, during those thrilling games involving the bottom four seeds, they curtained off the upper deck of Verizon Center to try to hide the emptiness of the building. (The crowd was announced at 7,000, which may have been counting by twos.)

Next year the tournament goes to Brooklyn — Brooklyn? No doubt fans from the South will be thrilled with the notion of riding the subway to Barclays Center since there is zero parking there and with the prices they will pay for New York hotels.

It is worth remembering, though, that no conference cares about tradition or fans or coaches and players. It is all about corporate sponsors and TV. In fact, the ACC tournament now carries the name of an insurance company as part of its official title. Which is as it should be because there is nothing more soulless than a corporate name on an event that prides itself — or once prided itself — on tradition.

Years ago, when the Olympics went corporate and professional and lost much of their soul, someone wrote, “Only the athletes save the Games.”

The same is true of college basketball and this tournament. Pitt and Syracuse played an intense, entertaining game, each knowing that its season might very well be on the line. Syracuse rallied from 12 points down with 4 minutes 27 seconds left to tie the game at 68 with 1:59 remaining. But an awful pass from Frank Howard (a D.C. area product from Paul VI Catholic High) was intercepted by James Robinson (DeMatha) leading to what turned out to be the key basket. Syracuse’s Trevor Cooney missed a three-pointer at the buzzer, and Pitt escaped, leading to an on-court celebration by the relieved Panthers.

Syracuse is now 0-2 in the ACC tournament since joining the league. Of course, that doesn’t mean the Orange haven’t provided plenty of legendary moments, does it?

Maybe next year, Driesell finally will be honored as a Big Ten legend. Of course, like Coleman, he has all those memories of Greenville.

For more by John Feinstein, visit washingtonpost.com/feinstein.