ACC basketball’s middle class holds the key to reversing its negative narrative

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — So much for being subtle.

Because the ACC, apparently, didn’t mince words with new Louisville coach Pat Kelsey during its spring meetings back in May.

Pat, meet expectations; expectations, Pat. You’re gonna be really familiar with one another.

“They made it very clear that Louisville being really good helps everybody,” Kelsey joked Thursday, during the league’s preseason basketball event. “No pressure, Coach.”

Blunt? Perhaps. But given Louisville’s historical success — it’s one of six ACC programs that has won a national title in the modern era — versus its recent … uh, not success, it’s easy to understand the league’s perspective. The thing is, Louisville isn’t the only program that hasn’t pulled its weight lately — which is how the ACC ends up in its current predicament, fighting uphill against a narrative that’s hard to shake.

It wasn’t long ago, from 2015 through 2019, that the ACC reasonably could claim it was college basketball’s premier conference. During those five seasons, it produced three separate national champions (Duke, North Carolina and Virginia), had four other teams make at least one Elite Eight (Louisville, Notre Dame, Syracuse and Florida State), finished no lower than third in KenPom’s conference rankings and received more NCAA Tournament bids (38) than any other league.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips’ conference will have three new teams this basketball season in California, SMU and Stanford. (Jim Dedmon / Imagn Images)

But since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, that perception has taken a nosedive. The ACC hasn’t finished better than fourth in KenPom’s conference rankings since 2021, fully bottoming out in 2023 when it somehow finished seventh, behind every other high-major conference and even the Mountain West. Its NCAA Tournament bids have followed the same downward trajectory; the ACC’s 15 total invites during the past three seasons are its fewest in three years in a decade. And even back then, the league’s eight top-four seeds were twice as many as it has produced in the past three seasons.

That is how you wind up with ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, already mired in college athletics’ plentiful other pitfalls, publicly advocating for his league’s postseason chances … weeks before a game has been played.

“From top to bottom,” Phillips said, “this league has been undervalued.”

Here’s the important thing and the crux of the ACC’s dilemma: Despite those sagging postseason invites, despite any analytics woes, the league has performed when it matters most — in March. Even with just 15 lowly bids during the past three seasons, the ACC has the most NCAA Tournament wins of any conference — even more than the Big East, despite Connecticut’s consecutive national championships — and the most Final Four teams (four).

“I’ll tap down on it,” NC State coach Kevin Keatts said. “We do not go to the Final Four if we do not compete in the ACC, where we’re battle-tested through those 20 games we play.”

So, what gives? Why the disconnect? And how does the ACC fix its perception problem, if it can at all? The Venn diagram of those answers is a circle: improve the league’s middle and lower rung. And for the first time in some time, there’s a realistic belief that’s possible.

Louisville, of course, is the most obvious example. The Cardinals just suffered through easily their two worst seasons in program history, going a disastrous 12-52 in two seasons under Kenny Payne. But realistically, the team’s problems aren’t two years old; UL hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2019 and hasn’t produced a single first-round NBA draft pick since 2019. A key reason the ACC added Louisville at all back in the 2010s was for its men’s basketball prowess, so, yeah … it would love for that to re-materialize.

And without being too certain — Payne was a slam-dunk hire until he wasn’t — Kelsey has put himself in position to make one of the sport’s biggest year-over-year flips. The 49-year-old brought in an entirely new roster in his first offseason, one that is the oldest and most experienced in the entire ACC. Accordingly, The Athletic ranked the Cards third in its preseason ACC predictions.

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But Louisville isn’t alone. Several recent league bottom-feeders seem poised to approach respectability this season and quite possibly the NCAA Tournament. And if they do? Well, the league’s perception might sort itself out rather quickly.

Take Wake Forest, which has been on the wrong side of the bubble for three years running. Between Chris Paul and Tim Duncan, the Demon Deacons have a storied basketball history in their own right … yet they haven’t won an NCAA Tournament game since 2010. (Ish Smith, who hit the game-winning shot in Wake Forest’s last March Madness victory, squeezed in an entire 14-year NBA career since his alma mater has had another such win.) More recently, Steve Forbes has produced two ACC Players of the Year during the past three seasons — Alondes Williams in 2022 and Ty Appleby (who won the AP honor but not the public vote) in 2023 — and had a third player become a first-round draft pick (Jake LaRavia in 2022) but still hasn’t made the elusive Big Dance.

“If five years ago, when (athletic director) John Currie came to talk to me, and he said, ‘Listen, Steve, you’re going to win 13 ACC games, you’re going to win 10 ACC games, and you’re going to win 11 ACC games and not make the tournament,’ I’d have said to turn around and go home,” Forbes said. “I mean, really?”

And there are ample other examples. Syracuse, now in its second year post-Jim Boeheim, doesn’t have the hurdle of un-teaching 40 years of zone defense — and Adrian Autry already won 20 games in his debut season, the first time the Orange cleared that barrier since 2019. He returns a five-star talent in guard J.J. Starling, added the program’s first top-20 recruit (Donnie Freeman) since Michael Carter-Williams and added much-needed frontcourt reinforcements via the transfer portal.

Then there’s Georgia Tech, which returns three starters — including all-freshman forward Baye Ndongo — from Damon Stoudamire’s inaugural team, which sneakily beat two of last season’s Elite Eight squads. No one is expecting the Yellow Jackets to suddenly turn into the machine they were in the early 2000s, but a top-eight league finish is absolutely within reach, if not more.

“You’ve got Carolina, you’ve got Duke — you’ve got your mainstays,” Stoudamire said. “I get that, right? But when I think about Tech, when Tech is really good, it makes this league good.”

Notre Dame, which returns ACC Rookie of the Year Markus Burton, should be much improved in Micah Shrewsberry’s second campaign. NC State might not make the Final Four again, but Keatts used that momentum as best he could this offseason, signing the makings of his third straight NCAA Tournament team. (Without five wins in five days by a 10th-place team, that is.) Miami added top-10 recruit Jalil Bethea and (somehow) returns point guard Nijel Pack for his final season of college hoops and should look much more like its Elite Eight/Final Four self from 2022-23 than last season’s injury-riddled, 15-17 mess.

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This is projecting, yes. Things go wrong, sometimes horribly. But the fact that this level of expectations is even reasonable entering this season — especially compared to some of the doom and gloom of the league’s post-pandemic position — is encouraging, if nothing else.

“I really believe,” Phillips added, “the bottom of our league won’t be maybe as bad and in as difficult of a spot as they’ve been the last several years.”

The ACC spent this spring doing behind-the-scenes legwork to put its teams in the best situation possible: addressing scheduling concerns, meeting with metrics experts, etc. But ultimately, none of that matters if its teams — especially those recent middle- and lower-tier ones — don’t perform.

For the first time in several seasons, it’s fair to expect they will.

“I don’t know everybody’s team because it’s hard, everybody’s got new guys,” Forbes said, “but our league’s pretty good.”

(Top photo of Pat Kelsey: Jim Dedmon / Imagn Images)