College football’s conference championship weekend this season was unlike any other. Bowl Subdivision neophyte James Madison landed in the playoff. Indiana earned its first outright Big Ten title since 1945, Duke its first outright ACC crown since 1962. Georgia dismantled Alabama for SEC bragging rights, while the playoff selection committee — finally! — realized that Miami was more deserving than Notre Dame.
Add the endless Lane Kiffin/Ole Miss/LSU coaching drama, and there was no oxygen for college basketball to breathe.
But no window better reveals the upgrades in ACC men’s basketball this season like that first weekend of December.
From Friday-Sunday, the league’s 18 teams went 15-3 in nonconference games. Most important was the quality of those victories.
Six came against power conference opponents, most notably Duke winning at Michigan State, Louisville besting Indiana on a neutral floor, Notre Dame upsetting Texas Christian on the road, and SMU defeating Texas A&M at a neutral site. Moreover, Virginia Tech and Virginia beat premier Atlantic 10 foes George Mason and Dayton, respectively.
“All you have to do is follow the money, follow the investment,” Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes said. “I talk to a lot of coaches all over the country, especially in the SEC, and we became a lot more competitive as a league with them in recruiting than we have in the last couple years based on the amount of money teams were (spending).”
This marks the fifth season since the NCAA approved name, image and likeness compensation for college athletes, and by all accounts, ACC programs, arrogantly believing the league’s historical success would continue to fuel recruiting, were slow to adapt.
Not coincidentally, the ACC’s share of NCAA Tournament bids plunged. Five teams made the bracket in 2022, ’23 and ’24, four last year, an aggregate of 19 over four seasons.
During that span, the ACC’s Duke (2022 and ’24), North Carolina (’22), Miami (’23) and NC State (’24) reached the Final Four, but the conference’s lack of depth was jarring.
For example, SEC squads earned 36 NCAA bids, nearly double the ACC, in those four seasons, including an unprecedented 14 last year. Meanwhile, the Big 12 had 28 bids, the Big Ten 30.
The ACC used to boast such numbers, totaling 30 NCAA teams in the four tournaments before NIL.
Flipping the script
“When you compare it to the SEC, it’s just really, really stark,” a high-major head coach with ACC experience told me last February. “If I’m the ACC commissioner, if I’m a fan in that area, or even a (university) president, I’m like, how the hell did this happen? How did this happen? We’re the (freaking) ACC.”
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, a former graduate assistant basketball coach at Arizona State, was keenly aware and owned the league’s shortcomings.
“I’ve just been so restless with men’s basketball and where we’ve been,” he said in October. “This is historically, in men’s college basketball, the very best conference in the country. It just is. When you talk about the number of championships, when you talk about the (amount) of success through the course of 73 years, and then even most recently.
“The last four years (we) were 36-18 (in the NCAA Tournament). It’s the best winning percentage of any conference in the country. We don’t have a problem winning when we get into the tournament. We’ve had a problem getting into the tournament. … We have to continue to pay attention to the legacy of this conference and the history, and it starts with men’s basketball.”
In a collaborative call to action, Phillips, ACC athletic directors and coaches revamped their recruiting, scheduling and investment strategy, and as conference play kicks into overdrive across Division I this season, the league is positioned to flip the script.
Through Wednesday’s games, eight ACC teams are among the top 40 in the NET rankings employed by the NCAA Tournament selection committee, 10 among the top 60. That should translate to more conference games that the NET classifies as the most difficult, Quadrant 1 and Quadrant 2.
Last year at this time, six ACC teams ranked in the top 60.
Fourteen ACC teams are higher in NET than at this stage last season — the exceptions are Duke, Pitt, Florida State and Georgia Tech. Miami (181st to 33rd), Virginia Tech (196th to 58th), Virginia (117th to 21st) and NC State (114th to 36th) have authored the biggest leaps.
Ken Pomeroy’s metrics are equally bullish on the league. Though still behind the SEC, Big 12 and Big Ten, the ACC’s KenPom rating has increased from 9.16 last season to 14.99, by far the sport’s largest jump.
Nonconference success is the linchpin.
The ACC’s winning percentage last season versus outside competition was .653, its worst since 1968-69. With three nonconference tests remaining — Virginia-Ohio State, Louisville-Baylor, and Duke-Michigan — this regular season’s winning percentage is .762, on pace for the league’s best in seven years.
Last season against their fellow power conference programs, ACC teams were 20-59, a mind-bending 4-30 versus the SEC. This season, those records are 38-39 and 15-17.
Every ACC team except Florida State, Georgia Tech and Boston College has beaten at least one opponent from the Big East, Big Ten, Big 12 or SEC. A dozen ACC squads, including Virginia and Virginia Tech, have multiple power conference victories, led by Duke (five), North Carolina (four) and Clemson (four).
Pilloried by many as misfits for the ACC, league newcomers SMU, Cal and Stanford are a combined 38-9. The Mustangs are nationally ranked for the first time in nine years and defeated North Carolina last week; Cal owns a victory over UCLA, Stanford an upset of Louisville.
Progress in the portal
“I think the eye test tells the story,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said, “but also the analytics. If you look at Quad 1 and 2 opportunities. Eight top 40 in NET. You can go down the line, the coaching, everything about it I think is vastly improved, and it’s a bigger challenge going into each game. But that’s what you want in league play.”
Striving to create more marquee nonconference matchups, Phillips and the ACC’s athletic directors trimmed league play from 20 to 18 games this season, and the pivot has paid instant dividends.
Among contests ACC coaches added to their schedule after the shift to 18 were Virginia Tech-Providence, North Carolina-Georgetown, Notre Dame-TCU, Clemson-Cincinnati, Virginia-Dayton, NC State-Ole Miss, and Virginia Tech-George Mason. The ACC won each of those games, more than offsetting defeats such as Duke-Texas Tech, Wake Forest-Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame-Purdue Fort Wayne.
ACC coaches aren’t surprised, for as they recruited high school prospects, transfers and international pros during the offseason, the increased payrolls were evident.
“It’s hard to ascertain fact from fiction sometimes,” Virginia Tech’s Mike Young said of compensation offers. “There’s a lot of garbage out there in terms of noise and what’s real and what’s not real. But some of the numbers were, yeah, like, wow, holy cow. That’s a change.”
The money attracted better players.
In 2024, two of the top 50 transfers as rated by 247 Sports signed with ACC programs: Belmont’s Cade Tyson moved to North Carolina, Oklahoma’s Javian McCollum to Georgia Tech.
Tyson was a bust in Chapel Hill and subsequently transferred to Minnesota, where this season he’s averaging 21.7 points a game. McCollum missed much of last season, his last in college, with concussion symptoms.
For this season, ACC teams signed eight of 247 Sports’ top 50 transfers: Texas Tech’s Darrion Williams moved to NC State, Kennesaw State’s Adrian Wooley, Xavier’s Ryan Conwell and UVA’s Isaac McKneely to Louisville, Arizona’s Henri Veesaar to North Carolina, Nevada’s Nick Davidson to Clemson, Indiana’s Malik Reneau to Miami, and Georgia Tech’s Naithan George to Syracuse.
Conwell, Reneau, Veesaar and Williams are thriving, as are less-renowned transfers such as Dai Dai Ames (Virginia to Cal), Amani Hansberry (West Virginia to Virginia Tech), Jaron Pierre (Jacksonville State to SMU), Quadir Copeland (McNeese State to NC State), Malik Thomas (San Francisco to UVA) and Carter Welling (Utah Valley to Clemson).
The ACC’s freshmen have been equally impactful.
North Carolina forward Caleb Wilson (8) celebrates after scoring against Florida State during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025, in Chapel Hill, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris Seward)
Duke’s Cam Boozer and North Carolina’s Caleb Wilson are performing at All-America levels and, along with Stanford’s Ebuka Okorie, are among the nation’s top five freshman scorers. Virginia’s Thijs De Ridder, Virginia Tech’s Neo Avdalas and Louisville’s Mikel Brown, the latter sidelined the past five games by a back injury, are essential to their respective teams.
De Ridder, Avdallas, North Carolina’s Luka Bogavac, Louisville’s Sananda Fru, Virginia’s Johann Grunloh and Virginia Tech’s Antonio Dorn are part of an international contingent that brings not only overseas professional experience, but also maturity to the ACC. By season’s end, each of them will be 20-23 years old.
“Now I think we have Depends dandies,” Forbes said, playing off Dick Vitale’s “diaper dandies” term for elite freshmen.
Regardless of the international’s ages, they represent ACC coaches’ embrace of the new world order.
And it’s not just the younger, progressive coaches such as Scheyer, Virginia’s Ryan Odom, NC State’s Will Wade, Miami’s Jai Lucas, Cal’s Mark Madsen, Louisville’s Pat Kelsey and Florida State’s Luke Loucks. It’s old-school types such as Young, Forbes, Clemson’s Brad Brownell, Stanford’s Kyle Smith, Pitt’s Jeff Capel, SMU’s Andy Enfield and North Carolina’s Hubert Davis.
“Certainly the Big Ten and the SEC have invested a lot of money over these last few years,” Loucks said, “and with money comes talent. And I think that’s what the ACC is doing now and will continue to do.”
Loucks harkened back to his playing days at Florida State and the Seminoles’ 2012 ACC Tournament championship run, which included victories over Duke and Carolina.
“There had to be a dozen future NBA players between those two teams (actually, it was 14),” Loucks said, “and you’re starting to see that again. … That’s the ACC I know.”
David Teel, david.teel@virginiamedia.com
