LOUISVILLE, Ky.– When The Atlantic Coast Conference convinced Syracuse, Pitt, Notre Dame and Louisville to defect from the Big East in 2014, it seems like just a matter of time before the 15-team conference became the dominant force in college basketball

The future is now.

The conference is sending a record six teams– North Carolina, Virginia, Miami, Duke, Notre Dame and Syracuse– to the NCAA Sweet 16 this week. The tidal wave could have been even bigger if Louisville– a likely high seed– hadn’t opted to self impose a post season ban in the wake of an NCAA investigation.

That’s how good this league is.

“I’m really proud of our league,” Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said. “This is unprecedented, what’s going on. I thought at this year’s media day in Charlotte, that this league would show it’s the deepest and the best. It’s evolved into that. It really has. Remember, I came from that league called the Big East where we were by far the best league and had this kind of depth and number of NCAA teams. . . Six from one league in the Sweet 16? It’s unbelievable and further validates how hard our league was.

“I’m very proud, when I look back and go, ‘Wow we were 11-7 in that league’.”

Notre Dame needed some of that luck of the Irish to rise into this rarefied air. Rex Pflueger, a sparingly used, little known freshman guard who fooled around with beach volleyball on the beaches of Southern California, used his vertical leap to score on a tip in at the buzzer off a missed layup by center Zach Auguste to give the sixth-seeded Irish a 76-75 victory over 14th-seeded Cinderella SF Austin in a second-round game at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Notre Dame advanced to a East Region semi-final match up against Wisconsin Friday night in Philadelphia, keeping their dream of a Final Four alive

The ACC had two top seeds– Carolina and Virginia– still alive along with a third seed, Miami; and a fourth seed, Duke– still alive in the brackets. Carolina will play fifth-seeded Indiana in an East Region semi-final in Philly. Virginia will play fourth-seeded Iowa State Friday in Chciago. Miami will play second-seeded Villanova in a South Region semi-final here Thursday and Duke will play top-seeded Oregon in a West Region semi-final Thursday in Anaheim.

The surprise guest is 10th-seeded Syracuse, which will play 11th-seeded Gonzaga Friday night in Chicago.

The Orange had no idea whether they would be in the dance after losing in the first round of the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament. Most bracket experts believed the Orange had played itself out of the NCAA with a third loss to Pitt its fifth defeat in six games. A desperate Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim attempted to publicly sway the committee, arguing Syracuse shouldn’t be punished for the five losses it suffered while its coach served a nine-game NCAA suspension.

But no one was holding their breath.

Syracuse got an unexpected reprieve from the committee, which apparently felt Boeheim’s absence was a factor and gave the Orange a spot in the bracket as one of the best 36 at large teams. Eleven days later, Syracuse had defeated seventh-seeded Dayton by 19 points and muscled its way to a 75-50 victory over 15th- seeded Middle Tennessee, the Conference USA champion that had defeated Big Ten champion Michigan State, 90-81, in the first round, to advance to an improbable 18th Sweet Sixteen under Boeheim.

“Well, we knew it was a hard conference,” Boeheim said. “We were in it all year. And when we played outside the conference in the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas we had some success (beating Connecticut and Texas A & M). We struggled in the conference for the most part because we were playing good teams, really good teams, and it’s hard to judge a conference during the year. I mean, it’;s hard. And you can;t just go to the NCAA Tournament. But I think you have to go a little bit by what conferences do in the tournament. That’s the only thing we have to judge on because during the regular season, they’re just playing within your conference. It’s hard to tell. You’re jut proving that you’re good within your conference. I think the tournament is a good measuring stick. It’s not everything.”

The seven ACC teams have gone 12-1 to date. Pitt’s loss to Wisconsin in the first round on the conference’s only blotch on an otherwise perfect resume. The league’s overwhelming success, which has put the ACC in position to walk away from this tournament with a financial windfall exceeding more than $30 million, is directly related to beating team they were supposed to beat– and having the good fortune to avoid higher seeded teams. SF Austin elmiinated third-seeded West Virginia and Middle upset second-seeded Michigan State in the first round. In every second-round game an ACC team played, it faced a team– Providence, Butler, Wichita State, Yale, SF Austin and Middle– that had sprung an upset in the first round. The average seed of ACC tournament opponents was 11.8.

This is the first time since 1985 a conference has a legitimate shot to duplicate what the Big East accomplished when Georgetown, St. John’s and eventual champion Villanova held their own neighborhood block party at the Final Four in Lexington. The ACC has put itself in position to make history this week.