With less than a month until college basketball gets underway, it’s finally time to take a look at how the ACC stacks up and rank the teams. There’s going to be a lot of change in the ACC from last year to this one, and the conference should be markedly better this time around. We don’t yet know what form college hoops is going to take this year, but no matter what the season looks like, it’s still college basketball. Here’s the way we see the ACC with three and a half weeks before hoops is back:
Tier 1
1) Virginia
This really shouldn’t require much explanation. The Hoos return almost all of the key components in last year’s phenomenal defense, and five of the seven players who got legitimate minutes. Two very good players in Mamadi Diakite and Braxton Key are gone, but they are replaced by (my NPOY dark horse candidate) Sam Hauser and a few freshmen with immense potential upside. This is going to be a very deep team that will once again boast the nation’s top defense, and Tony Bennett will lead the clear ACC favorite into action in a few weeks.
Tier 2
2) North Carolina
Duke is most likely going to be ranked higher than North Carolina in all of the preseason polls and rankings, but I’m going to have to deviate from that standard for one simple reason: Experience. Both teams bring in a crop of freshmen, but UNC has the better upperclassmen by a mile, and for that reason I think the Tar Heels will be the better team. Garrison Brooks might be the best player in the ACC, and Armando Bacot and Leaky Black are almost certain to have improved tremendously by the time the season rolls around. Caleb Love will provide the freshman flair, and Carolina looks like the second-best team in this conference.
3) Duke
Krzyzewski actually returns a couple of five-star recruits for once, in Matthew Hurt and Wendell Moore. Hurt had the better stats a year ago, but I’m putting more eggs into the Wendell Moore basket. Besides those two, Duke is once again a team built mostly around freshmen. And with the current state of things, it doesn’t look as if the Cameron Crazies will be there to help those freshmen with the transition to college ball. Duke is going to be a very good team, make no mistake, but I’m not totally sold on the freshmen yet while the returners are far from awe-inspiring.
Tier 3
4) Florida State
The Noles are losing a ton of talent. Trent Forrest, Patrick Williams, and Devin Vassel—the players who played the largest part in FSU’s first ACC regular season title—are all gone. The good news for Leonard Hamilton is that his teams are always so deep that he’s got plenty of reinforcements. They have the senior talent with MJ Walker, and Scottie Barnes is going to be one of the top freshmen in the league. Florida State hasn’t yet established themselves as a perennial power in the ACC, but they’re getting closer. Better start to rethink “football school” status.
5) Louisville
Another team that loses a load of great players. Gone are Jordan Nwora, Dwayne Sutton, Steven Enoch, and Ryan McMahon, among others. They do, however, bring in a solid recruiting class. The Cardinals are going to be a good team both offensively and defensively; they’re never going to be great. Chris Mack needs somebody to step up and assert their dominance, otherwise Louisville is never going to challenge for the top three.
Tier 4
6) Miami
I may or may not be going a little overboard with the tiers here. I simply cannot, however, make myself put ever-inconsistent Miami in the same tier as rock solid Florida State or Louisville. With that said, Miami could potentially challenge for those fourth and fifth spots—or they could end up in 10th. Chris Lykes is back again to run through (and under) opposing defenses, Kameron McGusty returns as well, and a few good recruits provide a ray of hope for the Hurricanes.
7) Georgia Tech
It may be slightly optimistic to stick Georgia Tech this high up the list, but dammit I like their backcourt. Jose Alvarado and Michael Devoe make up what is probably the third-best backcourt in the conference. And after winning 11 conference games last year, why not be hopeful for the Yellow Jackets? Having a good ACC team in Atlanta would be cool, and this Georgia Tech team looks like it could be just that.
8) Syracuse
It’s tough to know what to make of this team. They lose Elijah Hughes, which is obviously a Hughe loss (and yes, I did that on purpose). Syracuse returns pretty much every other major member of last year’s team though. That’s both good news and bad news; good because you keep most of your key components from last year’s team, and bad because, well, last year’s team barely squeaked to 10 ACC wins. Buddy Boeheim and Joe Girard are going to have to put this team on their backs. And at the end of the day, Syracuse has had a losing conference record exactly three times in 43 years under Jim Boeheim. This won’t be the fourth.
9) Clemson
Clemson won nine conference games last year, and oddly four of those came against Duke, North Carolina, Florida State, and Louisville. Aamir Simms is the headliner for the Tigers, and he’ll need some help from Al-Amir Dawes and others if this team wants to improve upon their 9-10 record. First and foremost though, Brad Brownell needs to get his guys to stop jacking up threes every possession, and then we can talk about a winning conference record.
10) NC State
They lose a couple great players, they return a few good players… It’s all ultimately a toss-up with NC State. Under Kevin Keatts the Wolfpack have been one of the most inconsistent teams in the conference, taking great teams to the wire one game and getting run out of their own gym by terrible ones days later. They have a host of solid seniors this year, so maybe they can put it together. Either way, it’s tough to put any confidence into NC State until they’ve proven themselves a few times.
Tier 5
11) Virginia Tech
Admittedly, Mike Young got off to a fairly impressive start last year given the expectations that were set for him. They still crashed and burned, of course, but there were flashes of a good team in there. It’s just tough to see any reason for improvement this time around. Landers Nolley left, leaving the load to Wabissa Bede. The Hokies are not a deep team by any stretch of the imagination, and those that will see the court (with the exception of Bede) are not very good, to be frank.
12) Pittsburgh
Had Trey McGowens not flaunted off to Nebraska, Pitt would be a team that could be looked at as challenging for the upper half. Without him, their hopes of making anything out of the season are significantly decreased. Xavier Johnson and Justin Champagnie are both often-overlooked guards that can make games interesting at times, but the rest of this Pitt group simply isn’t good enough.
Tier 6
13) Notre Dame
Notre Dame may have been the best worst team in the ACC ever a year ago. For a team that finished at an even 10-10, they were in a surprising amount of games against good teams. They lost six (six!) ACC games by five points or less, among which included losses to FSU (1 pt, 2 pts), Virginia (1 pt in OT), and Louisville (3 pts). But gone are Rex Pflueger and TJ Gibbs, and gone is powerhouse John Mooney. Prentiss Hubb is back, but that’s about it for a rebuilding Mike Brey and Notre Dame.
14) Boston College
The difference between BC being 14 and Wake being 14 is that Danny Manning got fired; Jim Christian did not. It may have been kinder to cut the man loose than to force him to endure what promises to be a season with very few wins. Unlike the rest of the aforementioned teams, there’s nobody to really point at and say, “oh yeah, he’ll be good.” Steffon Mitchell might fit that mold at some point, but right now it’s a bleak outlook.
15) Wake Forest
Steve Forbes is undoubtedly a better coach than Danny Manning. The problem is that when Manning was fired, seven players transferred out in addition to three graduates. After all that loss, the fact that Forbes is going to field a team and potentially win a few games is actually impressive. Now, that doesn’t mean that this team is going to be remotely good, but in four years could they be knocking on the door of the upper third? Very possibly.