AN ALL-CUTTHROAT CONFERENCE.

Byline: BRIAN DOHN College Basketball 

In a three-day stretch, Maryland went from being ranked 22nd to losing two games by a combined 49 points and dropping out of the Top 25.

The first loss was at No. 3 North Carolina, followed by a 15-point loss at No. 4 Wake Forest. In two weeks, the Terrapins play at No. 5 Duke.

Welcome to the Atlantic Coast Conference, which is the benchmark for a basketball conference. Some major conferences are fortunate to have three of its teams ranked. The ACC has three teams in the top five.

Surviving March Madness might be easier than a two-week run in the conference by which all others are measured from top to bottom.

``That's the way the schedule falls,'' Maryland coach Gary Williams said.

``You can't do much about it, especially in our league this year. You're going to be playing good teams regardless of their ranking. We're not complaining about it. We just have to go play. We have to play better. It's one of those things where you realize how good those teams are. You would like to be on a level with them.''

The expanded 11-team conference, which added Miami and Virginia Tech for the rest of the teams to devour, has four of the top eight teams in the country.

Although much of the focus is inside North Carolina's state borders, 2004 Final Four participant Georgia Tech also is a major player and ranked eighth.

It's made for a dominating conference for the rest of the country to deal with, and sheer treachery for anyone inside the league trying to survive.

``We have a great, great conference,'' Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said.

``I think we have as much tradition as anybody could possibly desire, so it's a conference that has attracted really good players at every school. You don't do it without good players.''

Seven of the league's teams were ranked at one time this season, including North Carolina State, which has one of the best players in the country in Julius Hodge.

But next month, the Wolfpack has a 10-day run that will be more challenging than surviving the Elite Eight.

In that span, the Wolfpack plays three successive road games, visiting North Carolina, Wake Forest and Georgia Tech. Those three teams entered Wednesday with a combined 37-4 record.

Part of the ACC's amazing success this season is its veteran flavor, as players opt to remain in school rather than make the quick jump to the NBA.

Duke has experience in senior point guard Daniel Ewing and junior guard J.J. Redick. Georgia Tech has seniors B.J. Elder and Will Bynum and junior Jarrett Jack.

North Carolina has juniors Raymond Felton, Sean May and Rashad McCants. Wake Forest has juniors Justin Gray and Eric Williams. And there is Hodge, a senior.

``We have an interesting phenomenon (in) the fact that we have a lot of experienced teams,'' Krzyzewski said.

``That hasn't been a word that's been used a lot in college basketball over the last few years.

``I don't know if that's a cycle (in which) we're going to see more and more experienced teams throughout the country, but it seems like we have experienced high-level talent to a greater degree than most conferences. It's talented. It's played together in the previous year or two years, and that makes for better basketball.''

But all is not glowing inside the bloated ACC, which will grow to 12 next year when No. 13 Boston College (13-0) enters. Because of its size, no longer does every school play each other home and away.

It means the Wolfpack, which hosts Duke and Georgia Tech this week, do not play the Blue Devils at Cameron Indoor Stadium this season.

``It's not ideal when everybody in the conference doesn't play the same schedule,'' N.C. State coach Herb Sendek said.

``We've talked about that repeatedly since expansion. To have a true champion, to have a conference where the standings reflect things with as much equity as possible, everybody plays the same schedule.

``But there's no use continuing down that road because we're not. Expansion made that a no-longer-feasible possibility.''

--Hawks not soaring: St. Joseph's, the tiny Jesuit school in Philadelphia that captured the nation last season by going undefeated in the regular season, is playing basketball again this season.

It's just not nearly as many people care because the Hawks are a mediocre team playing in the continually plummeting Atlantic 10 Conference.

Without Jameer Nelson and Delonte West, who led the Hawks to a 30-2 mark last season, Saint Joseph's is 5-6 and had a four-game losing streak against San Francisco, Old Dominion, Bucknell and Ohio State.

CAPTION(S):

2 boxes

Box:

(1) FAST BREAK

(2) Daily News/CBS 2/KCAL 9 SPORTS CENTRAL POWER RANKINGS

- Brian Dohn