Chip Bremer
What looked like a typical men’s basketball season for the ACC early on actually turned into a somewhat interesting journey resulting in a few crash-and-burns, a few utter disappointments and some amazing runs that are quite rare in today’s college sports arena. To put it all in perspective, here’s a brief rundown of how the 2023-24 season went down:
The Good
In a year when most ACC teams suffered because of their strength of schedule, the Clemson Tigers took advantage of some early wins against ranked SEC teams Alabama and South Carolina and a signature win in Chapel Hill to boost their profile for an at-large NCAA Tournament bid. Then, they rode the hot hand of Chase Hunter all the way into the Elite Eight with wins over Baylor and Arizona. While their run ended with a loss to the high-scoring Crimson Tide, the end result was a signal that Brad Brownell has taken this program to the next level. He’ll miss Hunter and All-ACC center P.J. Hall next year, but he’s proven that his system works, and the Clemson program could be a fixture in the ACC elite for a long time.
Of course, the biggest success story is the NC State Wolfpack. Heading into the ACC tournament, this team looked dead in the water, and head coach Kevin Keatts was likely headed for the unemployment line. But this makeshift group of transfers miraculously gelled at the perfect time and did the unfathomable—winning five games in five days to capture the ACC title and a berth in the NCAA Tournament.
Then, they continued their hot streak all the way to the Final Four, becoming only the sixth 11-seed in tournament history to make it that far. But the shocking thing was the fact that Keatts carefully constructed this roster from the transfer portal—rather than the traditional means of recruiting high school seniors—and it worked better than anyone could have dreamed.
And no, regardless of what some talking heads say, it wasn’t luck that got them that far—it was being healthy and everyone finally buying into the roles that were assigned to them (including big tasty D.J. Burns) and using suffocating defense to run down opposing shooters and hunt rebounds for quick outlets and fastbreak buckets. It was a miraculous run reminiscent of Jimmy V’s 1983 championship, and something that made the Wolfpack relevant again in the ACC.
The Bad
It’s somewhat of an understatement that the ACC as a whole had a down year. Schedule strength, BPI and other metrics were down across the board, and the conference could only secure five bids to the NCAA Tournament (should’ve been four, but someone felt sorry for Virginia).
However, no team epitomized the failings of the conference like the Louisville Cardinals. In only two years, Kenny Payne turned the program into the biggest dumpster fire anyone has seen this century, with a 12-52 record (5-35 in conference). Despite giving Payne the boot early on and making the quick hire of Pat Kelsey, nearly the entire team jumped ship into the transfer portal, making Kelsey’s job even more difficult.
Then again, that’s the magic of the portal —it gives teams a chance to burn the roster to the ground and build it up rather quickly. Now, no one should expect NC State-like results, but Kelsey should be able to put a decent program on the floor in a couple of years. And it will certainly be immensely better than what Payne produced.
While we can discuss the disappointment of Jim Laranaga’s Miami Hurricanes after such lofty preseason expectations, the more disastrous—and perhaps more puzzling—postmortem is that of the Virginia Tech program, which, in three days, saw a mass exodus of nearly the entire roster, including those who would’ve been key returnees in Sean Pedulla, MJ Collins, Lynn Kidd and Tyler Nickel. Mike Young is still trying to figure things out, and while he did get Mylyjael Poteat to change his mind and stay with the Hokies, his grip on the program seems tenuous at best.
Tech had a decent year and a reasonable appearance in the NIT, and things actually looked rather good for next season, but there’s something bad brewing below the surface in Blacksburg, and it's not just the lack of NIL funding. The transfer train has slowed somewhat, but it looks like the Hokies’ overhaul will be the least of their problems heading into next season.
The Meh
This is the part where we dissect what went wrong with the UNC Tar Heels after earning top seeds in both the ACC Tournament and NCAA Tournament and then failing to claim titles in either. However, there isn’t much to dissect. Hubert Davis did his best to plug holes with incoming transfers and provide R.J. Davis and Armando Bacot with adequate support, but the development of the younger players in roles for which they weren’t ready—that might’ve been the only shortcoming. Then again, that’s just part of the process for building a program.
The same can be said for the Duke Blue Devils, who had a successful season by most standards, but failure to get past a hot, in-conference rival twice in the postseason puts them in the “meh” bracket. Jon Scheyer hasn’t had his players long enough to truly have an impact on the court and put his own stamp on the program. For all the blue-chip talent, the player development just isn’t there—at least not yet. And maybe that’s the lesson for the Tobacco Road rivals—patience.
Because while Scheyer and Davis may eventually become successful coaches in their own right, they aren’t Krzyzewski and Williams—and fans will just need to be more forgiving in the near term.