Is ACC basketball broken?

With football season finally behind us, sports fans across the nation can finally shift their focus back to our beloved college basketball. No more Patrick Mahomes conversations for a while. The NBA trade deadline has come and gone. Baseball is still a million miles away. From now until early April, college basketball takes center stage. Down the home stretch, this is shaping up to be a fantastic finish.

Duke and Auburn have been dominant all year but may be losing their auras of invincibility. St. John’s and Rick Pitino are back in the Big East. The SEC teams are taking turns beating each other every week. And the race for the Big Ten conference title is heating up. One of the most interesting plots of this college basketball season has been the weakness of ACC basketball. Beginning with the SEC’s domination of the ACC in the ACC-SEC Challenge (or No Challenge), the strength of the conference in its premier sport is being questioned. It would sound crazy if it wasn’t warranted this season. As of the February 3^rd AP Poll, the ACC currently has one team, Duke, ranked in the Top 25. Here are the number of teams in the rankings from each conference:

• SEC: 9
• Big 10: 6
• Big 12: 5
• Big East: 3
• AAC: 1
• ACC: 1

If you think the lack of representation by ACC basketball teams is a fluke, here is the Coaches Poll:

• SEC: 7
• Big Ten: 6
• Big 12: 5
• Big East: 3
• ACC: 2
• AAC: 1
• WCC: 1

Slightly less weighted towards the SEC, but the overall trend is similar. The SEC is dominant, the Big Ten and Big 12 are having good seasons and the Big East is holding its own in what has probably been a disappointing year for them. But how can the ACC be this weak?

We will be completely honest with you; we don’t have an answer. It takes more than one season (or in this case, not even a full season) to make a trend. The ACC may have a great NCAA tournament as a conference, and everyone will settle down. It may return to its historically normal levels of dominance next season. While we don’t have an answer, we want to address a few things regarding the ACC.

Is this season really that unusual?

We apologize in advance for the eyesore of a table that we have included below, but we think it is helpful. Take a look at the data and see if you notice anything.

Since the 2010-2011 season, the number of ACC basketball teams ranked in the final AP Poll has ranged from 1 to 6 teams. Those two extremes occurred once each. Generally, there have been between 3 and 5 ACC teams in the Top 25. The last two years saw 4 and 3 teams in the final poll: right in line with the last fourteen seasons. Yes, Duke is the only currently ranked team. If that holds true through the end of the season, it would be an anomaly that has not occurred since…the 2021-2022 season.

Do we think the ACC will only have one team in the final poll? Louisville was ranked in the poll released on January 27^th before losing to Georgia Tech. If they have a strong finish to the season, they have a very realistic chance to get back into the Top 25. Clemson, Pitt and UNC are the only other ACC teams that have been ranked this season. Clemson just knocked off Duke, and that may be enough to get them into next week’s ranking. UNC has a tougher schedule through the end of the season than Pitt, giving them a better chance to become ranked.

Right now, the bracket experts at ESPN are predicting that four teams from the ACC will make the tournament. They are also predicting that 13 SEC teams will be dancing, but let’s stay focused on the ACC. The largest number of ACC tourney participants in recent history was nine, but that was almost a decade ago now. Last year, there were five teams from the ACC, but NC State (who ended up making the Final Four) wouldn’t have even made the tournament if they hadn’t won the ACC tournament, receiving the conference’s automatic bid.

Getting back to the question, are the ACC’s struggles this season really that unusual? We think the answer is no. In the last three tournaments, there were five ACC basketball teams in the field. Prior to that, the league had a strong stretch with six to nine teams getting invites. But from 2011-2013, the league had either four or five teams dancing. The ACC has seen relatively weak stretches before, only to follow them up with strong years. There is always some cyclicality to the strength of the league, and we would expect that to continue. Don’t overreact to one season; the ACC is going to be fine.

The ACC has lost too many great coaches in the past few years.

This has been a common refrain on ACC basketball game broadcasts recently. While technically true, we don’t think this is valid. Let’s break down the teams that are dealing with losing a great coach.

Duke lost Mike Krzyzewski after the 2021-2022 season, and Jon Scheyer took over the following year. In his first season, Duke finished the year ranked 12^th in the nation and was a 5-seed in the NCAA tournament. Scheyer’s second Duke team finished the year ranked 9^th and was a 4-seed. This year, Duke is currently ranked #2 in the country (although they will drop after the loss to Clemson) and will most likely be a 1-seed in the tournament. Krzyzewski was one of the greatest coaches in college basketball history. While Duke didn’t fall apart in his absence, you could argue that it took Duke a couple years to recover from his departure. But Duke is back where we are used to seeing them, and you can’t blame the Blue Devils for this year’s weak conference performance.

This will be Hubert Davis’s fourth season as the head coach of the Tar Heels. Roy Williams retired after losing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament (as an 8-seed). In Davis’s first year as coach, North Carolina lost in the national championship game to Kansas. That North Carolina team was stocked with talent from Williams’s tenure, but they also lost 10 games and were a tournament surprise (if you can call Carolina making it to the national championship a surprise). In Davis’s second year, North Carolina didn’t make the tournament field. The following year (Davis’s third), North Carolina was a 1-seed but lost in the Sweet 16. Which brings us to this year where UNC is currently unranked and sports a 13-10 record. North Carolina has been inconsistent since Williams’s departure, but we wouldn’t say that this season is a result of Williams leaving three-and-a-half years ago.

Jim Boeheim was the head coach of Syracuse for 47 years and won over 1,100 games for the Orange. That being said, Syracuse only won one national championship during his tenure, and that occurred before Syracuse joined the ACC in 2013. In Boeheim’s final two years, Syracuse failed to make the tournament field. Adrian Autry took over last season, and Syracuse missed the tournament field for the third time in a row. Barring a miracle in the conference tournament, this year will make it four. Was Boeheim a coaching legend? Absolutely. Is Syracuse struggling? Yes. Is it fair to say that losing Boeheim led to the program’s struggles. Absolutely not.

Tony Bennett won a national championship with the Virginia Cavaliers in 2019. He coached the Cavs for another five seasons after that triumph; Virginia missed the tournament field twice, lost in the First Four once and lost in the First Round twice. This is Ron Sanchez’s first year as the head coach in Charlottesville, and Virginia is not going to make the tournament. But it is hard to say that this year’s result is significantly different from the last handful of years under Bennett.

This is Notre Dame’s second season without Mike Brey on the bench, and it will be the second season that new coach Micah Shrewsberry’s squad will miss the tournament. But Notre Dame only made the tournament once in Mike Brey’s last six seasons, and they were knocked off in the second round of that one.

Let’s look back at the last twenty seasons of Wake Forest basketball. Three NCAA tournament appearances in those twenty years. The Demon Deacons lost in the First Four in 2017, the First Round in 2009 and the Secon Round in 2010. Wake Forest hasn’t been a consistent tournament team since the Dave Odom and Skip Prosser glory days.

We could do this all day, but the reality is that the ACC programs with established, successful coaches were generally struggling before their legendary coach stepped down. The fact that they are continuing to struggle is not a new phenomenon. These programs have not been immediate turnarounds, but the struggles are not new either.

There are four new coaches in the ACC this season (if you include Miami’s Bill Courtney who is taking over midseason for Jim Larranaga). Louisville is currently second in the conference standings, and SMU is in fourth place. Virginia and Miami are struggling; that still leaves two out of the four teams with new coaches at the top of the conference. It’s not fair to say that an influx of new (worse) coaches is leading to poor records at the ACC schools.

NIL has fundamentally weakened the ACC’s competitive position.

This is another explanation we hear from the talking heads. The college sports landscape has fundamentally changed, and the ACC can no longer compete. We don’t have any special insight into how the NIL collectives are working behind the scenes. But we don’t believe that NIL is at fault here.

Most of the collectives support football and basketball along with a number of other sports. We assume that most of the money is earmarked for football; it’s the biggest revenue generator at these schools and should receive the biggest piece of the pie. If football is #1, men’s college basketball is #2 and it’s not close. Check out Sportico’s database for more information if you are interested. The men’s basketball teams are most likely being supported by the NIL collectives at most of these schools.

Take this NIL collective ranking with a grain of salt, but it is interesting to look at, nonetheless. Miami, Florida State, Louisville and Notre Dame are all listed in the top 15 NIL collectives. Schools like Duke, North Carolina, Stanford, Cal, SMU and Virginia have some deep-pocketed alumni who want to see their alma maters perform at the highest level. If the ACC schools were really disadvantaged by the NIL structure, wouldn’t you see an immediate impact on their recruiting rankings? Next year’s incoming classes look pretty strong, and schools are paying those players to come.

The changes brought upon college basketball by NIL are not going to lead to the ACC becoming an afterthought in college basketball. There will be some surprising signings where a less heralded program pays up for a stud recruit, but the ACC will still be able to compete for top talent.

Our explanation for the ACC’s struggles.

The ACC is not having a banner year. Duke is a national power again, and they boast one of the best players in college basketball in Cooper Flagg. But the rest of the conference is struggling. Those struggles were highlighted by the SEC’s throttling of the ACC in this year’s ACC-SEC Challenge. Competing against the SEC in its most competitive basketball season ever is a tall task, but we wouldn’t have expected the ACC to go 2-14 against its southern rivals.

We have tried to show that this isn’t the first time a season like this has happened. The ACC has had down years before in terms of national polls and tournament invites. But the conference has always bounced back, and we would expect that to happen again.

We do not think that coaching changes or the NIL are explanations. Some legendary coaches retired, but, honestly, most of those coaches needed to go. They weren’t performing at the levels they had previously, and those programs needed a refresh at the helm. NIL is not going to break the ACC. Yes, the SEC is having a great basketball season, and many people associate the SEC with football and football with NIL. But if the SEC’s basketball success was somehow tied to “football” schools being able to raise more money for athletes, wouldn’t Ohio State, Texas, Penn State and Notre Dame (the four finalists in this year’s college football playoff) be having better basketball seasons?

The ACC is having a bad, but not unprecedented, season. It is temporary, and the league will be strong again soon. We think there is more negative sentiment around the conference this year for two reasons. North Carolina is down, and the ACC has become a victim of unrealistic expectations as the conference has expanded.

The first one is simple. North Carolina is not having a great season. ACC basketball, for better or worse, revolves around Duke and Carolina. It’s the greatest rivalry in college basketball. When both teams are ranked in the top five or ten, it feels like the ACC is the epicenter of the college basketball universe. Combine those two schools with a strong season from NC State or Wake Forest or Clemson, and the ACC doesn’t feel as weak. Long story short, you can partially blame North Carolina for the ACC’s perceived struggles.

Secondly, do you remember the table from earlier? In the 2010-2011 season, the ACC had two teams ranked in the Top 25 and sent four teams to the tournament. There were 12 ACC schools then, and that included relative newcomers Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech. Now the ACC has 18 member schools. They should be putting more teams into the tournament, right? Not exactly.

Since the 2011 season, the ACC lost Maryland and added Notre Dame (non-football), Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Louisville, SMU, California and Stanford. Syracuse and Louisville are the only new schools with basketball pedigrees (not Duke and Carolina strong, but still good), and the conference lost a basketball school in Maryland. Notre Dame and Stanford have had good teams in the past, but no one is going to argue that they are top-tier basketball programs. To survive the conference realignment carousel, the league effectively watered down its basketball product.

It is unrealistic to expect the ACC to send more teams to the tournament just because they have more schools. History tells us that most of the new conference members are not likely to be consistent winners in basketball. Syracuse and North Carolina State are terrible this season. North Carolina is down. Add that all together, and we can’t fault you for feeling like ACC basketball is broken. The reality is just that it’s down this year, nothing more and nothing less. Don’t expect it to stay down for long.