At the ACC’s preseason media event in Charlotte last month, commissioner Jim Phillips gave a detailed account of his league’s effort to improve the perception of its basketball product and place more than four or five teams into the NCAA Tournament bracket next March. “We’ve connected with current and former members of the NCAA committee and NCAA staff to best ensure the conference and our membership understands the metrics and system by which programs will be evaluated,” he said.
Phillips didn’t need to put that much effort into solving the problem. Because for all the intricacies of the NET and the analytics that go into the Quad system, the secret to returning the ACC to a place among college basketball’s elite isn’t really a secret at all.
Just win more games in November and December, when the NET rankings are set and narratives are formed.
The ACC hasn’t done enough of that since the COVID-interrupted 2020 season. The league hit what it hopes will be rock bottom last year when it compiled its lowest nonconference winning percentage (.652) since Richard Nixon was president. That mark includes a 2-14 embarrassment in the high-profile ACC/SEC Challenge.
But that trend may finally be shifting back in the right direction. ACC teams combined to win 35 of their first 36 games during the first week of the new season, outscoring their opponents by an average of 25.9 points per game. With the glaring exception of bottom-feeder Boston College, the momentum has continued into Week 2.
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The conference is 49-6 and sporting a winning percentage of .890 through Thursday’s games. And it’s not just fattening up on the cupcakes its teams are supposed to be beating. Duke has defeated Texas, Louisville took down rival Kentucky and North Carolina rolled past Kansas to equal its total of Quad 1 victories from all last season. But the blue bloods aren’t the only ones doing their part to lift the ACC’s stature. Virginia Tech flexed some new-found muscle by beating Providence in a neutral-site matchup that will help improve the league’s analytics while even in defeat, Wake Forest and Florida State provided a glimpse that the ACC might be deeper than most predicted.
The Deacons, picked to finish 11th in the conference’s preseason poll, came within an eyelash of upsetting No. 6 Michigan in Detroit on Tuesday. Steve Forbes’ team showed some improved offensive firepower with the addition of transfers Mekhi Mason (Washington) and Myles Colvin (Purdue) and had chances to win on the final possession of both regulation and overtime before suffering an 85-84 defeat.
Later that same evening in Gainesville, Fla., the Seminoles came within a missed three-pointer by Robert McCray with seven seconds left of extending defending national champion Florida to overtime. McCray, a transfer from Jacksonville who started his career at Wake Forest, scored 29 points in the close 78-76 loss that, according to Gators coach Todd Golden, should serve notice of FSU’s potential in Luke Loucks’ debut season.
“I think the expectation was outside of our building, outside of the arena, that it would be a game for us to control. But we knew coming in how difficult it was going to be,” Golden said in his postgame comments. “Luke has done a phenomenal job in a short period of time, getting that program playing a very unique style that’s really hard to prepare for and playing with love and confidence.”
The league’s three other new coaches – Will Wade at NC State, Ryan Odom at Virginia and Jai Lucas at Miami – have injected a similar jolt of energy and swagger into their teams as well. While it’s still too early to proclaim that the ACC is truly “back,” especially with this year’s challenge series against the SEC looming in two weeks, it’s off to a good start.
Fantastic Freshmen Living Up to Their Hype
One big reason for the ACC’s early resurgence has been the arrival of a star-studded freshman class that has significantly upgraded the talent level throughout the league. First-year players Ebuka Okorie of Stanford, Neokils Avdalas of Virginia Tech, Caleb Wilson at North Carolina and Cameron Boozer of Duke accounted for five of the top seven scoring performances in the nation during the opening week.
Avdalas and Wilson shared both the league’s first Player and Rookie of the Week awards. Louisville’s Mikel Brown, meanwhile, showed off his own five-star credentials while getting Week 2 off to a fast start by hitting for 29 points and 5 assists in an emphatic rivalry victory against Kentucky. It was the highest scoring game by a Cardinals freshman since Edgar Sosa’s 31-point effort against Texas A&M in the 2017 NCAA Tournament.
It was an impressive performance that brought even NBA star Donovan Mitchell to hyperbole. “He’s special,” the Louisville alumnus told the 247Sports site Cardinal Authority. “Better than I was when I was here.”
Brown wasn’t the only ACC freshman to be a difference maker for his team against a highly-ranked opponent. One game after bursting onto the scene with 22 points against Central Arkansas, the fourth-highest scoring debut by a UNC freshman, Wilson went 9 of 11 from the floor while scoring 24 points, to go along with 7 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 assists to carry the Tar Heels to an 87-74 win against Kansas. The 6-foot-10 forward then posted his first career double-double 13 points and 14 rebounds.
Wilson has provided coach Hubert Davis’ team with the dominant, athletic inside presence it lacked a season ago. And his influence on the program hasn’t just been limited to the court. He convinced UNC fans to wear white to the Kansas game, even though it wasn’t officially designated by UNC as a “White Out” event.
“When he steps on the court, obviously, you can see his game. But when he steps in the room you can feel his personality. His personality lights up a room as soon as you get in it, ” Davis said of Wilson in his postgame comments. “We had a White Out because Caleb went onto social media and said ‘I want a White Out.’ We had a freshman just say we’re having a White Out and the whole 22,000 showed up in white.”
While Wilson, Brown, Avdalas and preseason ACC Freshman of the Year Boozer all arrived at their respective schools with five-star fanfare, Stanford’s Okorie’s meteoric rise to the top of the class has been something of a surprise. The four-star guard set a school freshman record by scoring 26 points against Presbyterian in his debut with the Cardinal and is leading the conference in scoring with a 25.3 per game average.
Not only is the ACC’s crop of plug-and-play freshmen talented, it’s also deep. Syracuse’s Kiyan Anthony, the son of Orange legend Carmelo Anthony, is averaging 17 points and 3.5 assists while shooting 67 percent from the floor and Virginia forward Thijs DeRidder is averaging 15.3 points, while Georgia Tech’s Mouhamed Sylla ranks second in the conference in rebounding at 12.0 per game.
Technically Speaking, NC State Is No. 1
Will Wade has made an immediate impression on the ACC with his brash personality and the uptempo style of play he’s brought to NC State. While his arrival in Raleigh has received rave reviews from the Wolfpack’s rabid fan base, who sold out the 19,000-seat Lenovo Center for Wade’s debut against NC Central, it hasn’t gone over quite as well with the officials working his games.
Wade’s team doesn’t just lead the ACC in scoring at 106 points per game while getting off to a 3-0 start. It might also lead the nation in technical fouls. The Wolfpack has already been slapped with four. Wade has earned two of them, one in each of his first two games at NC State.
That’s nothing new for the fiery coach. In 2018, he got T’d up three times in his first 16 games at LSU. It’s a record he’s not looking to break. “I’m going to have to adjust,” Wade said after getting whistled for arguing a call in a win against UAB last Friday. “This is a little softer (conference) than I’m used to. I’ll have to adjust to that.”
True to his word, Wade made it through Tuesday’s win against UNC Greensboro without running afoul of the officials. The same can’t be said for his players, though. Picking up on their coach’s scrappy nature, Quadir Copeland and Tre Holloman were both assessed technicals for their roles in a sideline scuffle early in the first half. Holloman’s offense was ruled a flagrant two, leading to his ejection. The good news for the Wolfpack is that Holloman won’t face a suspension, since his transgression didn’t involve fighting.
“We’ve got to be smarter,” Wade said. “We can’t have guys getting kicked out of games. But, we’ll take it.”
Around the Rim
• It’s yet to be seen whether athletic directors around the country carry the trend of midseason firings over from football to basketball. But if they do, Boston College’s Earl Grant could be one of the first on the doomsday clock. Grant was already on the hot seat after going 12-19 (4-16 ACC) and missing the ACC Tournament last season. But the heat has been turned up even higher with his current team off to a 1-2 start, including a horrible loss to Central Connecticut State (ranked No. 308 by KenPom) on Tuesday in a game that saw the Eagles go 7 of 34 from beyond the three-point arc. Grant has never finished higher than 10th in the ACC during his four seasons at BC. His only winning overall record came in 2023-24, when the Eagles went 20-16 and earned an NIT bid. Since BC is a private school, Grant’s buyout has not been publicly disclosed. He is under contract through the 2028-29 season.
• The folks in Charlottesville are learning to embrace a much faster pace than the one they experienced during the past 16 seasons under Tony Bennett and Ron Sanchez. Virginia’s 91-point effort in Tuesday’s win against Hampton was its most prolific offensive output since scoring 100 vs. Marshall on New Year’s Eve 2018. The Cavaliers have scored at least 80 points in each of their first three games under new coach Ryan Odom, something that happened only once during Bennett’s tenure. That happened in 2006 when UVA hit the 80–point mark in four straight games. This current group of Cavaliers can equal that streak on Saturday, coincidentally enough, against the same Marshall team as their most recent high-water mark. “I’m pleased with the mood of the team, the attitude of the team right now, and their willingness to be coached,” Odom said after the Hampton game. “They understand that they need to get better and they come every day with the right attitude to do that.” The Cavaliers currently have six players averaging double-figure scoring. While their average of 86.3 points per game ranks only 11th in the ACC, it’s still 22 points better than last season, when they finished dead last in the league in scoring offense.
• Duke played its earliest true road game in program history when it traveled to West Point to face Army on Nov. 11. While the Blue Devils barely had to break a sweat to beat the overmatched Cadets, rolling to a 114-59 victory that was their most lopsided ever away from Cameron Indoor Stadium, they did manage to get something from the experience that could help them both on Dec. 6 when they travel to Michigan State — and farther down the road in the NCAA Tournament. “When you’re playing in March, the further you go the more distractions there are,” Blue Devils coach Jon Scheyer said after the game. “So to be able to focus on the details, focus on what your job is when there’s other things happening, when there’s energy you have to put in other places, I thought that was a great lesson for our team.” Those “other things” included a tour of the military academy’s campus, an emotional pregame ceremony honoring West Point graduate and Duke coach emeritus Mike Krzyzewski and a raucous sellout crowd shoehorned into a tiny gym. “The environment was incredible,” Scheyer said. “Starting that game, the crowd, the cadets, I thought it was a great, great lesson for our team of how we have to play.”
