ACC basketball issues have reached critical mass. There’s only one way out

The word ACC commissioner Jim Phillips has long used, and is still using, is “restless,” to describe how uncomfortable he is with the general state of men’s basketball in the league.

Accordingly, the ACC has done just about everything within its power to move that needle, from marketing and branding to going back to an 18-game schedule to bringing in “experts” like Joe Lunardi and Jerry Palm to discuss the NCAA selection process to benchmarking what other schools spend on basketball — even abandoning some of the traditional rivalry games that made the ACC what it is in an attempt to cook the scheduling books.

In the end, there’s only so much the league office can do.

There’s only one answer, one solution to the ACC’s basketball problem.

Win more games.

It has been four years since the ACC got more than five teams into the NCAA tournament, and only four made it last March, with North Carolina narrowly the last team into the field to keep it from being even worse. In 2019, the ACC accounted for three of the four No. 1 seeds. That seems like a generation ago now.

At the same time, over those four years, the ACC has had five teams in the Final Four. Its teams seem to do well in the NCAA tournament when they get in, so the question is how to get more teams in.

“We do not have a performance in the NCAA tournament problem,” Phillips told the News & Observer at the ACC’s annual basketball media event Tuesday. “We have an access problem. … We’ve given our schools all of the necessary educational components that we feel are important for them to be able to use that in a way that’s beneficial for their individual programs in the league as a whole.”

Fixing that is a leaguewide issue, demanding investment — watching Alabama’s cast-of-thousands basketball support staff troop through the Smith Center last December was a wake-up call not only for North Carolina but the entire league — and an end to the damaging nonconference losses to bad teams that sink the ACC’s NET rating before conference play even gets started.

The return to 18 conference games from 20 is designed to allow teams more flexibility in their nonconference schedules, even if some bizarre decisions about who plays who means N.C. State won’t go to Chapel Hill for the first time in more than a century.

But there is reason for optimism.

Start with the most promising crop of new coaches in years: Will Wade at N.C. State, Ryan Odom at Virginia and Jai Lucas at Miami. Wade and Odom are proven winners who fit the personalities of their new schools perfectly. Lucas is the kind of outside-the-box hire a football school like Miami needs to make to compete in basketball.

Lucas may need some time, but Wade and Odom are expected to deliver immediate success. The beating heart of ACC basketball, meanwhile, hasn’t looked this strong in a decade: All three Triangle teams have top-25 caliber rosters, even if Hubert Davis’ seat is scorching hot.

Throw in Louisville’s strong results in the transfer portal, and there are clearly five teams that should make the NCAA tournament. It’s just a question of whether anyone else can make the leap.

“Last year I’m hoping was a little bit abnormal, but we have to get off the mat,” Pittsburgh coach Jeff Capel said. “There has to be alignment across the board in every area, in investment to each program, in athletic departments. That’s from universities, athletic departments, everywhere. College athletics is very different now, and we can’t be stuck in the past as a league of, ‘Well, we’re the ACC.’ We can’t have that arrogance and just think that it’s supposed to happen because we’re the ACC.”

For so long, that was the prevailing mentality, especially as the ACC chased football success, often at the expense of basketball. Those decisions piled up and piled up until the results became too dismal to ignore. Now the ACC is in the fight of its basketball life: For the relevance it once took for granted.

This isn’t a battle that will be won on a spreadsheet or a television screen. The only place the ACC can fix its basketball problem is on the court.

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This story was originally published October 7, 2025 at 4:33 PM.

Luke DeCock

The News & Observer

Luke DeCock is a former journalist for the News & Observer.