With three weeks to play and five teams one game apart, who is the ACC favorite?

The Atlantic Coast Conference is not the toughest conference in college basketball. It’s fine, we can admit it.

That’s probably not what you came here to read, nor is it the conclusion you’d draw from a quick peek at the top of the conference standings, but it’s true. That label belongs to the Big 12, which has 80 percent of its teams in the KenPom top 40. It especially belongs to the Big 12 after a wild Monday night that exemplified that top-to-bottom strength.

But no conference in America can rival the quality at the top of the ACC. No conference in America can match the quantity of clubs in the top tier. And no conference, therefore, can match the ACC’s regular season title race, which, with less than three weeks remaining, isn’t only the most compelling in college basketball at the moment; it could be one of the most compelling in any conference in recent memory.

Five teams comprise that top tier. All five are within a game of each other at the top. All five are inside the KenPom top 15. All five are in the AP top 20.

All five entered conference play in December as contenders, and seven weeks later, all five remain locked in a topsy-turvy battle for regular season supremacy. Only a psychic could predict with any conviction who will emerge victorious — and even he or she might struggle to do so accurately.

But, of course, we must try. So who will win the ACC? To assess the race, three key questions must be answered.

Who is in the lead right now?

The most obvious of the three questions doesn’t tell us much about likely final outcomes. The race as it stands isn’t a dead heat, but it’s darn close.

1. North Carolina — 9-3
T-2. Florida State — 9-4
T-2. Louisville — 9-4
T-4. Duke — 8-4
T-4. Virginia — 8-4

Heading into the final weekend of January, Duke was 3-4 — three-and-a-half games out of first place, and two-and-a-half games behind two of the other contenders. North Carolina held a one-game lead at that time, and has stayed ahead of the pack since. But heading into the home stretch, all five teams are within touching distance.

Furthermore, of the 10 season series among the five teams, and therefore of the 10 potential head-to-head tiebreakers, five are still up in the air. Three of North Carolina’s four are yet to be decided. The team most likely to win a tiebreaker is Florida State, which won its only games against Louisville and Virginia, and beat Duke in the first of the teams’ two meetings.

The tiebreaker situation hints at the intrigue behind the answer to the second of our three queries as well. Six games remain between the five teams in question. The conference leader will take the floor in four of them. The schedules of the five teams make the race even more difficult to call.

Who has the easiest schedule?

All five teams play at least one of the other five over their final five or six games. But that doesn’t mean the five slates are equal. Here’s a look at the schedules, color-coded based on KenPom projected win likelihood, which heavily factors in the location of the game in addition to the opponent:

Note: The win likelihoods, and therefore the color-coding, also factor in the strength of the team whose schedule is being evaluated. For example, the win likelihood for Virginia (KenPom No. 2) in a home game vs. Duke is higher than the win likelihood for North Carolina (KenPom No. 10) in a home game vs. Duke.

So how do we rank the five, from most kind to most unkind?

1. Florida State | Average win likelihood: 68%

The Seminoles have the third highest average win likelihood of the five teams, but that’s because their adjusted efficiency margin is significantly lower than that of Virginia and Louisville. Home against Boston College is the easiest game in the conference, and although three of Florida State’s last five are on the road, two of the three come against Pittsburgh and Clemson, who have won a combined three ACC home games all season.

2. Louisville | Average win likelihood: 73.4%

Louisville doesn’t have a single “gimme” game, and gets the ACC-leading Tar Heels on the road, but that trip to Chapel Hill is the only matchup with a fellow contender. The Cardinals also get three of their last five at the Yum! Center, and the first of those five is against depleted Virginia Tech.

3. Virginia | Average win likelihood: 76.8%

Virginia’s batch of six opponents includes three games against the ACC’s top five, but just as important is the fact that it’s the only one of the five schedules that features four home games. The Cavaliers get both Duke and UNC in Charlottesville, which is advantageous for a team that must make up ground.

4. North Carolina | Average win likelihood: 59.2%

Carolina’s slate is brutal. The only saving grace is that it hosts Virginia, Louisville and Duke, rather than having to play two or three of its four marquee games away from home. And two of the road games — at NC State, at Pittsburgh — are very winnable.

5. Duke | Average win likelihood: 51.7%

Duke is the only team of the five that has four remaining road games, and two of those four — at Virginia, at North Carolina — might be the two toughest games that the ACC has to offer. Trips to Syracuse and Miami will be extremely arduous as well. The Blue Devils might only be favored by more than three or four points in one of their final six contests.

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Who is playing the best basketball right now?

Or perhaps more accurately and more straightforwardly, who is the best team? And second best, and so on? Who is likely to play the best basketball between now and March 5?

The separation is remarkably minimal. Duke has been the worst of the five teams on the balance of the past seven weeks, but has won five straight. Virginia has the best adjusted efficiency margin of the five, but has lost three of its last five. There’s no clear answer, no way to definitively rank the five. But let’s try.

1. Louisville | KenPom: 5

Louisville hasn’t lost at full strength since Jan. 4, and with Quentin Snider easing back to full health, the Cardinals are about to hit their stride. They have the ability to win out.

2. Virginia | KenPom: 2

Virginia hasn’t been playing the second-best basketball in the ACC, but it has also fallen victim to a few second-half shooting streaks. The Cavaliers play consistently great defense, but sometimes great offense simply beats great defense. Virginia gave up 39 second-half points to Villanova, 44 to Syracuse and 40 to Virginia Tech. All three games also came on the road. The collapses were more about the opponents than the Cavs themselves. Expect Tony Bennett’s team to get back on track against Duke on Wednesday.

3. North Carolina | KenPom: 10

Isaiah Hicks’ absence against Duke was a crucial one for the Tar Heels, who failed to realize their expected dominance on the offensive glass. Theo Pinson’s absence has also inhibited North Carolina’s growth. If both can be at their best down the stretch, Carolina can be as good as any team in the country. But Roy Williams’ club has been slightly out of sync in recent weeks.

4. Duke | KenPom: 14

Wait, but didn’t Duke just beat North Carolina? Yes, but it did so at home, and did so by shooting 48 percent from 3. The Blue Devils have begun to solve some of their problems, and have the potential to vault up this list in the coming weeks, but they’re far from a complete team. Let’s not overreact to one or two victories.

5. Florida State | KenPom: 13

Florida State is at the bottom of the list here, but the gap between No. 1 and No. 5 is so, so slim. The Seminoles just haven’t played with enough consistency, especially on the road, to look like title contenders.

But with that being said, if Leonard Hamilton’s crew goes 4-1 over its final five games, would that be at all shocking? With the schedule in mind, not at all. And a 4-1 mark might put Florida State in position to win the ACC. It seems very likely that a five-loss record will take the crown, and FSU’s tiebreaker position is favorable.

Then again, it wouldn’t be at all shocking to see any of the five teams sitting atop the standings on March 5. It also wouldn’t be at all shocking to see a tie between two — or three, or four — squads. Duke appears to be the biggest long shot, but would you really count out Mike Krzyzewski and the Blue Devils?

Plus, all of this analysis ignores Notre Dame, which is 8-5 (1.5 games back) and plays its next four games at Boston College, at NC State, vs. Georgia Tech and vs. Boston College. The Irish could very well enter a road tilt with Louisville on the season’s final weekend in the mix.

Louisville, North Carolina and Virginia are the three favorites, probably in that order. But they are more joint-favorites than anything else. The ACC is seemingly no closer to being solved than it was when 0-0 conference records littered the standings in late December.