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GREENSBORO — Welcome to Tournament Town, or so the banners suggest.

The welcome is conditional. There's a doormat at the rear exit of the Greensboro Coliseum that reads "Leave." No, that's not true.

The return to Greensboro for the 56th ACC men's basketball tournament, is a homecoming of sorts for the family of schools that have been coming here and places throughout the conference footprint since 1954.

Unlike past visits to Charlotte and Tampa Bay and D.C., this actually feels like an ACC tournament. Maybe without the basketball. We'll see.

At least for a day, the tournament feels exactly like a cocktail party, which the North Carolina coach infamously called it in 2004, mere hours before he was asked to leave.

All over town, there are signs that this is first a celebration. That will end about noon when the far-flung Bostonians meet the weary Virginians in a game that means virtually nothing. In a season in which road wins were precious, this will be the end of the road for a lot of schools.

The road to the ACC tournament was long and winding, or so we're told by those staggering into the hotels this week. But that's not true, either. To get to the ACC tournament in Greensboro, you just take a right on High Point Road.

The signs were everywhere Wednesday, painted on store windows and hanging from telephone polls. A man stood on the corner of Ellington Street and held four fingers in the air. The week's first scalper was selling books for the entire event.

"Four hundred bucks," he said.

He said his name was Bob. He was lying.

"I'll take $350," he said.

The face value on a four-day book of tickets is $396. We know that because Maryland and Georgia Tech had their allotment up for sale as recently as last week. For the first time in the modern history of the ACC men's tournament, people from Greensboro can actually go to games at the coliseum if they're paying attention. You can still go if you want to meet Bob at the corner of Ellington and High Point.

The roads today will be packed, so come early and stay late and don't let your bodyguard bring a firearm.

The family of schools wandering in Wednesday came bearing loads of baggage from the long season. Duke will arrive today feeling less burdened, having already cut its nets after winning the regular-season "title," which doesn't really exist.

Mike Krzyzewski sounded like a pitchman for the league this week when asked about coming to Greensboro.

"To me the ACC tournament is a celebration of our conference and basketball in our conference," he said. "It's the best tournament. It's the first one. It's the one everybody has copied. We get the original every time we play in it. It will always be important to our basketball program."

Fans began pouring into the lobby of the Sheraton Four Seasons early Wednesday, all dressed in various shades of road wear. The irony of a season defined by the inability of schools to handle the road is that it ends at a neutral site. The feeling of those having seen their seasons ruined in small towns all over the ACC footprint is that everybody has to win on the road now or go home.

Home sweet home is relative to how far from Greensboro you've traveled to get here.

"It's the best place to have it," Krzyzewski said.

His team will travel about 58 miles from the campus to the coliseum. Of course he thinks it's the best place.

"It's a neutral site," Krzyzewski insisted. "It's where the conference offices are. If you look at the history of the tournament, the league and the tournament has been founded by small towns, people and radio. People grew up listening to the tournament with a familiar voice, whoever their broadcaster was. I think that has had a lasting effect, and I think Greensboro brings everybody together. There are fans from all the schools. I just think it's a very special place to have it."

The banners were flapping in the breeze Wednesday as buses hauled tourists into the city and the economic indicators whirred to life up and down the pawn shop corridor that invites people to Tournament Town. Nothing much has changed here since the tournament first came to Greensboro in 1967.

And that's how it will feel when we return here next year and four of the next five. Welcome to Tournament Town. Don't trip over the doormat on your way out.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com