Reigniting ACC basketball starts with an obvious Step 1: Make good coaching hires. Your move, Virginia.
Miami and Florida State bought low with unproven coaches. Gone are the days of Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim, Mike Krzyzewski.
ACC used to be a nesting place for elite coaches. Now, the SEC enjoys that distinction. Is it any wonder the SEC enjoyed a hoops revival?
Reigniting ACC basketball starts by hiring better coaches. The process doesn’t end there. Good coaches require support. But, strong hires are a must.
The ACC’s hardcourt hard times will come into focus on Selection Sunday. Bracket experts expect the 18-team conference to be reduced to three or four bids in the 68-team field. That bid projection is more in line with the Mountain West than the ACC’s Power Four peers.
Duke offers the ACC a national championship contender, and Clemson and Louisville also rumble into March Madness, but there’s just not much conference depth.
As recently as a few years ago, the ACC served as a nesting place for elite coaches. Now, I’d rank Clemson’s Brad Brownell as the ACC’s second-best coach, behind Duke’s Jon Scheyer. I mean this as no dig on Brownell, who’s done a fine job at Clemson, but Clemson possessing the ACC’s second-best coach offers evidence of the conference’s insufficient health.
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Retirements turned ACC basketball on its head
The ACC’s woes became apparent in the fall. The conference mustered a 2-14 record in the ACC/SEC challenge. And the roots extend deeper than that.
In a 43-month period from April 2021 to October 2024, North Carolina’s Roy Williams, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Notre Dame’s Mike Brey, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim and Virginia’s Tony Bennett retired. Legends, most of them. Career winners, all of them.
Scheyer, Krzyzewski’s longtime understudy turned successor, kept the Dukies rolling with the elite. Elsewhere, Williams, Brey and Boeheim left voids that weren’t sufficiently filled, while Virginia’s search continues to replace Bennett.
Miami’s Jim Larranaga and Florida State’s Leonard Hamilton retired this season. Each is the winningest coach in his program’s history. Larranaga took two separate schools to Final Fours. More big shoes to fill.
“The ACC is struggling now, and everybody is searching for answers, and I say, what do you mean they’re searching for answers?” Mike Tranghese, the Big East’s former longtime commissioner, told me earlier this season. “I can tell you why they’re struggling: They lost six Hall of Fame-type coaches.”
The ACC made a go of it last season, turning five bids into a 12-5 March Madness record, before the veneer came off.
Four ACC coaching vacancies offered a chance to reset the board.
Virginia, North Carolina State with a chance to top Miami, Florida State hires
The hires so far come off underwhelming at worst, and unproven at best.
Miami tapped Duke’s associate coach Jai Lucas to replace Larranaga. Lucas spent the past few years working as an assistant at blue-blooded programs, earning regard as a skilled recruiter.
Florida State hired Luke Loucks, an alumnus who’d been an assistant with the NBA’s Sacramento Kings. He’s never coached college ball.
The combined head coaching record of Lucas and Loucks? It’s 0-0. Maybe, they’ll become examples of buying low and striking it rich, but I’m skeptical these hires will galvanize the ACC.
Virginia and North Carolina State retain a chance to fill their vacancies with more proven coaches.
Virginia, at least, ought to possess the commitment to pursue an established coach. Marquette’s Shaka Smart, whose career traces to Virginia Commonwealth, would be the proverbial home run, but uprooting the Wisconsin native from Marquette might qualify as a pipe dream.
VCU’s current coach, Ryan Odom, must be somewhere on Virginia’s list of options.
For N.C. State, how about Will Wade, LSU’s former coach thriving at McNeese State? An FBI wiretap of a Wade recruiting phone call derailed his LSU tenure. He served his time in the penalty box, and winning has never been his problem.
Other names that might be good for either Virginia or N.C. State include Furman’s Bob Richey, Drake’s Ben McCollum, George Mason’s Tony Skinn and High Point’s Alan Huss.
They’re proving themselves at mid-majors, building résumés worth a look from the big leagues. Think Nate Oats or Todd Golden. They won at Buffalo and San Francisco, respectively, before turning Alabama and Florida into national championship contenders.
Coaching hires spurred SEC. Can ACC follow suit?
The ACC should look to the SEC for inspiration of a hoops revival.
The SEC is positioned to qualify 12 or more teams for March Madness, which would break the NCAA’s qualification record. Rewind to 2016, and SEC basketball called rock bottom home. It qualified three teams for the tournament that year.
Determined to elevate the conference’s performance, Commissioner Greg Sankey appointed fresh personnel tasked with addressing the problem. Sankey’s hires included Tranghese, as a special assistant focused on basketball.
The SEC’s hoops solution featured a multi-pronged attack that included smarter scheduling, but stronger hiring formed the backbone of the SEC’s ascent.
The SEC now touts five coaches with at least one Final Four on the résumé.
Arkansas’ John Calipari, Auburn’s Bruce Pearl, Tennessee’s Rick Barnes and Mississippi’s Chris Beard are career winners. Alabama’s Nate Oats and Florida’s Todd Golden have plenty of tread left on the tires, and they join Pearl and Barnes with top-10 teams this season.
“The whole key is hiring good coaches,” Tranghese said.
ACC, take heed.
Blake Toppmeyer is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.