CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Of all the possible explanations for the ACC’s recent basketball downturn, the most plausible centers around the coaching turnover the league has experienced since the COVID season of 2020-21. It’s all but impossible to lose Hall of Famers such as Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams and Jim Boeheim, along with other stalwarts such as Mike Brey, Jim Larrañaga and now Leonard Hamilton without experiencing at least some dropoff.
There are positive signs, however, that the trend might finally be reversing.
It started last season with the hiring of Pat Kelsey, who transformed Louisville from a 24-loss doormat into an NCAA Tournament team in his first year with the Cardinals. Now, with an even greater influx of aggressive young coaching talent, the momentum promises to continue.
“We’ve had all these great giants of coaches who were in the ACC that have retired in the last couple of years, so there was going to be a reset and a couple of years where it needed to kind of figure out what it was going to be,” said Miami’s Jai Lucas, one of four first-year coaches who debuted last week at the conference’s preseason media event. “I think with some of the new coaches coming in and the success they’ve had in so many places, we’re moving towards the right direction of being the premiere conference in basketball again.”
Lucas left his job as an assistant to Jon Scheyer at Duke prior to the Blue Devils’ Final Four run so that he could get a head start on his first head coaching opportunity last spring. He is joined in the ACC’s coaching Class of 2025 by fellow rookie Luke Loucks at Florida State and experienced veterans Will Wade at NC State and Ryan Odom at Virginia.
“Every day that I walk in there I kind of pinch myself,” Odom said. “I’ve worked at a lot of different places, but this is the first job that’s been in my heart before I came to work there. Those memories I have from 1982 to ‘89 are real. So to have the responsibility that’s been given to me is really special and I’m certainly going to do my best.”
Three of the four new coaches are taking over teams coming off losing seasons, while Loucks’ Seminoles finished barely over .500 and missed out on the postseason in their final season under Leonard Hamilton. All, however, have taken advantage of the transfer portal to retool their respective rosters and create realistic expectations of a quick turnaround.
It also helps that each of their schools, especially NC State, has made a renewed financial commitment to give them a better chance at competing amid the new NIL, transfer-portal landscape. “I think we have a great influx of talented young coaches in our league, guys that can be at their schools for decades,” said Clemson’s Brad Brownell, who became the longest-tenured coach in the ACC after the retirements of Larrañaga and Hamilton. “But I also think you’re seeing administrations this year that have done some things to try to help put their coaches in a better position to be successful, and that’s going to have a direct impact on the success of our league as a whole.”
ACC injury list is getting shorter
Several of the ACC’s top players are currently on the mend from injuries. But while not all of them will be ready to answer the bell to start the season, the outlooks for Duke’s Maliq Brown, Louisville’s Kasean Pryor and NC State’s Alyn Breed are optimistic that the recovery process will allow them to contribute sooner than later.
Of the three, Brown is the closest to returning. The 6-foot-9 senior forward underwent what was described as “a minor procedure” on his knee in September and recently began participating in practice drills, although he has yet to return to full-contact practice.
NC State’s Breed is also back on the court after being cleared to practice earlier this week, but he still has a long way to go to get back into playing shape after suffering a season-ending knee injury just two games into the 2024-25 season. “Alyn is somebody who we have really high hopes for,” Wade said of the 6-foot-3 sharpshooter who came with him from McNeese. “I think he’s going to have some opportunities this year, but he’s practiced three times. He’s worked extremely hard to put himself back in this position, but we have great depth at guard.”
Pat Kelsey is taking just as cautious an approach with Pryor. “When that time comes, it will come,” the Louisville coach said. “We don’t want to rush it. We want him to come back when he is fully healthy. Once you are fully healthy, it takes time to get back in rhythm after not playing for the better part of a year. I’m excited about where he’s at and how he’s working.”
Scheyer is taking Duke’s show on the road
Duke was frequently criticized under Mike Krzyzewski for its reluctance to play true road games before the start of its ACC schedule. It became such an issue that one AP poll voter refused to rank the Blue Devils until they left the friendly confines of Cameron Indoor Stadium and favorable neutral courts for the first time.
That philosophy has changed under Coach K’s successor, Jon Scheyer. This year’s team won’t just take its show on the road once during the nonconference schedule. It will do so twice — on Nov. 11, at Army on Veteran’s Day, then again three weeks later at Michigan State.
The trip to Army was arranged as a tribute to Krzyzewski’s connection to West Point and Scheyer’s desire to play an early road game. The more challenging test in East Lansing was more the product of necessity than choice. “We love Coach (Tom Izzo), but we weren’t seeking this game out,” Scheyer said.
So why play it? Because in 2020, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, the Champions Classic matchup between the Blue Devils and Spartans was moved from Chicago to Durham with the understanding that the teams would meet again on Michigan State’s home court at some point in the future. “We basically said we’d return the game,” Scheyer said. “And we’re returning the game.”
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Located in the shadow of the most hyped rivalry in college basketball, NC State doesn’t need much of an excuse to feel slighted. But the ACC gave the Wolfpack one, anyway, by misidentifying star forward Darrion Williams’ photo during the team’s session with the media on Wednesday.
“We see where we stand,” coach Will Wade said. “Damn, the ACC can’t even get our best player’s picture right. You think that would happen to Duke or Carolina?”
Wade also took aim at the Tar Heels upon signing transfer Ven-Allen Lubin from UNC shortly after his hiring last spring. Wade criticized Tar Heels coach Hubert Davis for the way he used Lubin and predicted he would be significantly more productive with the Wolfpack.
Williams stoked the flames even higher by adding his own two cents in Charlotte. “We hate UNC, which I don’t have a problem with. I hate UNC as well,” the Texas Tech transfer said, before taking a shot at Davis. “I think their coach did Ven Wrong…So yeah, I just don’t like the guy.”
RJ Godfrey ‘boomerangs’ back to Clemson
It didn’t take long for RJ Godfrey to realize he’d made a mistake when he decided to transfer from Clemson after the Tigers’ Elite Eight run in 2024. The feelings were so strong that he began planting the seeds for a return even as he continued to play for the Bulldogs, averaging 6.4 points and 3.8 rebounds per game – numbers almost identical to those he posted the previous season for Brad Brownell’s Tigers. “I think it was Ian (Scheifflein) who said ‘you can come back whenever you want.’” Godfrey said. “Me and Ian talked so much that when the season ended, everyone on the team last year probably had it in their mind that RJ would be coming back.”
Godfrey’s return to Clemson is one of a growing number of “boomerang” transfers in college basketball – players who return to their original school after realizing that leaving wasn’t necessarily their best option.
“A lot of times when kids are making decisions, it’s not just the kid,” Brownell said. “There are people in their ears. Sometimes you go to another place and it’s not quite the same and it’s not just the basketball.”
Around the rim
• Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes has advice for anyone getting excited – or angry – over the numerous NCAA Tournament expansion scenarios currently making the rounds. Don’t believe them. Unlike the social media pundits, Forbes knows what he’s talking about: He just spent three days in Indianapolis discussing the matter as a member of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Oversight Committee. “If there’s going to be a change in the Tournament, our committee will be the first one to vote on it,” he said. “There’s all this swirl about this and that, and what it’s going to look like, but I just came from there and didn’t see one proposal.”
• This season’s ACC rosters are dotted with a number of under-the-radar newcomers poised to make an impact for their respective teams. It’s a group that includes Notre Dame’s Carson Towt, who led the nation in rebounding last season at Northern Arizona, Virginia Tech’s Izaiah Pasha, the 2025 CAA Rookie of the Year at Delaware and shooting guard Chase Forte, who came to Boston College by way of South Dakota. And then there’s the player Florida State coach Luke Loucks has dubbed “Alex Steen, the double-double machine.” A 6-foot-9 senior, Steen joins the Seminoles after amassing more than 1,100 points, 700 rebounds and 190 blocked shots in three seasons at Division II Florida Southern. “When Steen is on the court, something is going to happen,” Loucks said. “Sometimes good and sometimes bad, but there’s going to be some chaos. As long as he keeps playing exactly how he’s been playing, he’s going to find minutes for us. That jump that a lot of people worry about from the D-II to the D-I level, to me he’s handling great.”
• Even though Jim Larrañaga has retired, the longtime Miami coach continues to have an influence on the Hurricanes’ program through his connection with his successor, Jai Lucas. “Coach L and my father have known each other for a really long time,” said Lucas, whose father John was a college All-American and NBA All-Star. “Ever since I took the job, he was one of the first people to call me, congratulate me, and kind of talk me through it.” Lucas has extended Larrañaga an open invitation to attend practice anytime he wants, and has openly solicited the future Hall of Famer’s advice in preparation for his first season at The U.
• For the first time in his 24 seasons as a college head coach, Virginia Tech’s Mike Young doesn’t have a single player on his roster in either their third or fourth year in the program. It didn’t take long once he arrived in Charlotte on Tuesday to realize he’s not the only one in that situation. “I walk through these halls and I see all these players representing these different schools,” Young said. “I don’t know him and I don’t know him and I don’t know him. I will very soon. But it’s indicative of the times we’re living through. Not that it’s great, not that it’s bad. It’s just where we are.”
