ACC Basketball News & Notes: The Season is Here

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The college basketball season tipped off on Monday. In the ACC that meant that 13 games were on tap. As we begin the road toward the announcement of the field on Selection Sunday, the league once again has the preseason #1 team in the land. The North Carolina Tar Heels top the polls for a record 10th time and the first time since the 2015-16 season. Two other programs also begin their season as ranked teams, Duke at #7 and Virginia at #18. Here is a sneak peek at how the conference looks as the year gets underway.

With three teams in the year’s first poll, it marks the 298th week in which a member of the ACC has been ranked number one in the AP poll. That is the most of any conference in the land. Not only was UNC picked number one, but they were also chosen to win the 2023 ACC Championship. It is the first time since 2017. There are a couple of new coaches that will be head coaches at the schools they play for. Kenny Payne takes over at Louisville and Jon Scheyer will have a lot of eyes on him as he takes the reins from Coach K at Duke.

The transfer portal has become a popular place for players to enter looking for a better place to play the game of hoops. In the ACC, 34 Division 1 players decided on the Atlantic Coast Conference. 19 of them are graduate transfers. Every school in the league has at least one, Duke, Louisville, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest each landed four transfers to lead the league.

North Carolina’s Armando Bacot was named the preseason ACC player of the year. A season ago, he led the nation with 31 double-doubles. He finished the season averaging 16.3 points and 13.1 rebounds a night. His rebounding numbers placed him third in the country. His 14.3 boards a game in the league was the highest since Tim Duncan had 14.9 a game back in 1997. Bacot was one of only three players in power conferences to end their year averaging a double-double. The Rookie of the Year in the preseason is Dereck Lively of Duke.

For the fourth year in a row, the league will play a 20-game league schedule. Each team will play six opponents twice and eight others once (four home/four away). The rotation of the schedule is set through the 2024-25 season. On the graduation front, eight schools: Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Miami, North Carolina, Syracuse, Virginia, and Wake Forest had GSR scores of 100. Nine schools earned higher scores than the NCAA Division 1 average.

Some quick hits from some teams. Duke will start the season with 11 newcomers on the team, seven of them are freshmen. The Blue Devils have the #1 recruiting class as the season gets going. Miami’s head coach Jim Larranaga is the only coach in NCAA history to have 100-win teams at three different programs. George Mason, Bowling Green, and Miami. Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim will be inducted into the Syracuse University Ring of Honor on December 10. He and Dwanye “Pearl” Washington will become the fifth and sixth members of the ring of honor.

The Pittsburgh Panthers will start the season with three members of their backcourt as 1.000 point scores. Mike Sibande (1570), Neilly Cummings (1112), and Jamarius Burton (1003) .

That’s a look at the Atlantic Coast Conference as the season begins. We will be here all season long with news & notes from the league.