It’s an exciting time to be an ACC basketball fan (yes that includes you Syracuse Orange supporters). The once proud league has had a massive fall from grace — getting only four bids last year, the lowest since expansion — but a wave of new coaches and increased investment in basketball has fans believing across the landscape.
So let’s break down how each of the 18 teams in ACC look for this upcoming season, what their chances are at making the tournament, and whether they are on an upward or downward trajectory as a program.
This is part three of a six-part series giving a brief preview of each of the 18 teams in the ACC for the 2025-26 men’s basketball season. This is also probably the most exciting part as well.
Louisville
Returning to the NCAA Tournament was just the start of what Pat Kelsey hopes to accomplish at Louisville. It was dubbed the ReviVILLE and it continued with a massive influx of NIL cash this offseason to match Kelsey’s borderline obnoxious levels of enthusiasm for his job. (Sidenote: PK has to be top 5 on a list of college basketball coaches you’d most want to grab a beer with).
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I’m not sure there’s a better backcourt in the country than Louisville’s four-headed monster of Xavier transfer Ryan Conwell, Virginia transfer Isaac McKneely, Kennesaw State transfer Adrian Wooley, and five-star Mikel Brown Jr.
Conwell has made 208 three-pointers over the last two seasons at a 40+% clip for Indiana State and then Xavier, and he’s not even the best shooter in this backcourt. He’s more dynamic with the ball in his hands than McKneely — who himself is a career 42% three-point shooter with 182 made threes in Virginia’s snail pace system over the last two years — but isn’t the most dynamic player in this backcourt either. Wooley shot 42% on three-pointers off the dribble and off the catch, while also pressuring the rim at a high rate and converting 60% of his rim attempts at 6 foot 4. But none of those three are as tantalizing as NBA prospects as Brown, who shined in the U19 World Cup for Team USA and has the chance to be one of the best point guards in the country.
That group alone should be enough to give Louisville a top 5 offense in the sport, and adding Kasean Pryor and Aly Khalifa back from injury can only help that mix. J’Vonne Hadley is back as well and will provide versatility in smaller or bigger lineups. 22 year old German Sananda Fru comes stateside to play the five spot for the Cardinals, and if he’s as good as advertised, he can be a borderline All-ACC player too.
Louisville is quite clearly the No. 2 team in the ACC preseason behind Duke.
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Miami (FL)
Following two deep tournament runs, Miami has basically been M.I.A. for the last two ACC basketball seasons. That will change this year, and the identity seems completely different with new head coach Jai Lucas. He was the defensive coordinator and one of the lead recruiters for Jon Scheyer’s Duke staff that just put together one of the best defenses in the country last year.
The Hurricanes don’t quite have the personnell to be an elite defense — depth is seriously lacking — but the requisite toughness should be there to make The U an undesirable opponent on any given night.
Any time you can bring the starting point guard from a Sweet 16 team to your program, you’re typically bringing in a stud. Michigan transfer Tre Donaldson is exactly that, with a well-rounded two-way game that will set the tone for Miami. He’ll pair with New Mexico transfer Tru Washington, one of the best guard defenders that nobody talked about last season, to form a tough backcourt.
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Lucas was able to flip Shelton Henderson’s commitment from the Blue Devils to the Canes, and he’ll step into a starting role likely on day one. He’s another strong defender who can shore up the identity that Lucas wants to instill. Indiana transfer Malik Reneau will provide post scoring, while TCU transfer Ernest Udeh brings experience and rim protection.
The bench is full of question marks. International commits Salih Altuntas and Timotej Malovec are the swing pieces for this team. If they can hit, then the rotation becomes a little more sustainable. If not, I’m a little concerned about how this team will fare as the season wears on. All-in-all, it will be an encouraging sign for the ACC to see a Miami team with interest in playing defense.
NC State
I don’t know if there’s a program in college basketball that had a better offseason in terms of changing the trajectory of the program than NC State. Firing Kevin Keatts a year after a Final Four run was clearly the right move, but still took serious balls to do. But man, did NC State stick the landing. Will Wade has won everywhere he’s gone. He’s won a whopping 74.5% of his conference games, and he has taken three different schools to the NCAA Tournament. He has only underperformed his team’s preseason KenPom expectation twice in the eleven seasons that he has been a head coach. And he also brought in one of the sharpest and most connected people in the basketball space to be his general manager, spending a ton of money to hire Andrew Slater away from the Oklahoma City Thunder.
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Wade and Slater immediately got to work putting together a roster that is orders of magnitude better than anything NC State has had over the last however many years. The Wolfpack brought in three major contributors to teams that got a three seed or better in last year’s tournament. Michigan State transfer Tre Holloman will be the point guard, Houston transfer Terrance Arceneaux will be a menace on the wing, and Texas Tech transfer Darrion Williams picked the Pack over Kansas in a highly contested recruiting battle that signals to the world that NC State is for real. Williams is a shoo-in for Preseason All-ACC First Team.
NC State also brought in North Carolina transfer Ven-Allen Lubin to play the five, Florida State transfer Jerry Deng to drain some threes off the bench, and both Quadir Copeland (old friend alert) and Alyn Breed followed Wade from McNeese. Highly ranked freshman Matthew Able also figures to be in the mix.
The level of investment from NC State seems to have jumped into the top echelon of the ACC overnight, and the Pack will be a major player in the conference for years to come.
