College basketball’s lone undefeated Division-I men’s basketball team went down with defeat Saturday, as the Clemson Tigers fell to the Maryland Terrapins 92–87.

But while few expected Clemson to make it through the entire season with a perfect record, the larger question remains: Can the Tigers follow the example set by the last undefeated teams of the past few seasons and make a run deep into March? In many ways, the answer has more to do with the weakened state of the NCAA’s glamour basketball conference than it does with Clemson itself.

Most seasons, the Atlantic Coast Conference is a bloodbath, one that spits out two or three legitimate Final Four contenders, four or five more serious tournament hopefuls, and a lower tier that gives ACC opponents fits when visitors enter their raucous arenas. The conference hierarchy is usually clear. North Carolina and Duke are ACC royalty. Teams such as Maryland (2002 national champs), Georgia Tech (2004 national title runner-up), Wake Forest (which produced Tim Duncan, Josh Howard, and Chris Paul, among others) and Boston College (recently transplanted from the Big East) are March Madness regulars. Other schools have bounced between success and disappointment over the years. Clemson has remained, for the most part, one of the ACC’s weakest sisters.

It’s still early in the ACC season. But already, it’s become clear that the landscape has changed. Duke is 0–2, lacks its usual star power, and even has a usually unthinkable home loss to Virginia Tech on its ledger. Wake Forest and often dangerous North Carolina State may be the two worst teams in the conference. The door has swung open for the ACC’s lesser lights to make their mark. Clemson has stepped into the breach — the Tigers may be the ACC’s second-best team, behind only mighty North Carolina.

The Tigers own one of the most balanced attacks in the country, with five players averaging double figures in scoring. Their leading scorer, sophomore sharp-shooter K.C. Rivers, leads the team averaging 15 points a game — and he doesn’t even start. Clemson can hurt you in multiple different ways too. Rivers shoots 43% from beyond the arc; Vernon Hamilton, the lone senior getting significant playing time, is an all-ACC defender; Cliff Hammons owns an assist-to-turnover ratio of nearly 3-to-1, and Trevor Booker is a wily, long-armed glasscleaner, with more offensive than defensive boards this season.

Meanwhile, James Mays may be Clemson’s best player. The 6-foot-9-inch junior pivotman had one of the most impressive streaks anywhere until Saturday’s loss, leading the Tigers to 28 straight wins while he was in the lineup. Mays, the team’s second-leading scorer (13.4 points a game) and leading rebounder (7.7), led Clemson to an 11–0 start last season before being ruled academically ineligible. The Tigers then went 17–0 this season before succumbing to the Terps.

Both last year’s and this year’s fast starts have been met with skepticism. Teams in power conferences have often fashioned cupcake November and December schedules over the years. Coaches often defend the decision by claiming their teams need to build confidence before heading into the brutal throes of conference play. But the truth is, teams battling in conferences such as the ACC can rely on conference play to boost their RPIs and increase their chances of making the Big Dance in March. Add to that Clemson’s lack of a national profile, which prevents them from lining up made-for-TV matchups with big-name schools, and the result has usually been a slate of games against the likes of Wofford, Furman, and Charleston Southern

Clemson’s pre-conference schedule this year has been similarly soft. But the Tigers have mixed in some healthy greens with the usual bakery-fresh opponents. Clemson’s early-season wins included tilts with Georgia, South Carolina, and Minnesota. None of those teams look like threats to do much in their conferences this year, but beating two SEC teams and one Big Ten school is still an accomplishment.

The Tigers’ first four ACC games this season have solidified their status as true contenders. Clemson stormed out of the gate with wins over Florida State, Georgia Tech, and N.C. State. The Seminoles and Wolfpack have just one ACC win among them and the Yellow Jackets are one of the youngest teams in the conference. But the three wins were all notable for different reasons. FSU had knocked off defending champion Florida earlier in the season; Tech’s dynamic freshman duo of Thaddeus Young and Javaris Crittenton is one of the best in the country, and both the Florida State and N.C. State wins came on the road, a tough feat to pull off against anyone, and doubly impressive when it’s by double digits, as Clemson’s win in Raleigh was.

Last season, the last team to lose a game was Florida … and we know what the Gators did after that. Clemson isn’t as talented as that team was. A better comparison might be the 2003–2004 St. Joseph’s squad that went undefeated throughout the entire regular season, before losing to Xavier in the Atlantic 10 tournament. The Hawks similarly came out of nowhere that year, then surged all the way to Elite Eight before losing to Oklahoma State by two.

The balanced Tigers rank 18th in the country in adjusted Offensive Efficiency and 28th in adjusted Defensive Efficiency, according to the statistical Web site kenpom.com. The Tigers’ hot start, combined with several teams’ decline, gives Clemson a chance to roll up an impressive conference record — possibly 11–5 or better. (Upstart Virginia Tech, with a 3–0 ACC record and wins over Duke and Carolina already, can also make that claim.) Teams that rack up those kinds of records in the ACC usually get rewarded with high seeds in the NCAA tournament. A high seed would give Clemson a good shot at a big run.

For a school with only one Elite Eight appearance in its history, it’s a rare chance to catch the postseason tiger by the tail.

Mr. Keri is a writer for ESPN.com’s Page 2 and a contributor to YESNetwork.com.