CHARLOTTE, N.C. — For a league trying to return to the top of men’s college basketball, the ACC is doing a poor job of promoting its stars. The few of them that they have.
The retirement of the ACC’s top coaches, including Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and North Carolina’s Roy Williams, over the past five seasons certainly contributed to the valley the league finds itself in now. But what’s led to the league staying down has been its inability to have the depth of top talent it once had.
Advertisement
And the potential stars the league currently has, players who could be considered among the best in the nation and the first to hear their names called in next year’s NBA draft, were not being showcased at ACC Tipoff media days in Charlotte.
They were nowhere to be seen. Nowhere to be heard.
The right people already know who they are. NBA scouts have Louisville guard Mikel Brown Jr., Duke forward Cameron Boozer and North Carolina forward Caleb Wilson projected among the top-five picks in the 2026 NBA Draft.
I singled out those three players because they’re a microcosm of a bigger problem for ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips. The league should showcase the stars it has — because it doesn’t have very many.
Advertisement
They’re all freshmen, but we’re well past the age of schools making them wait before they can speak to the media. As top recruits, they’ve been doing interviews for so long and have become so savvy, they could teach a course on it. And they happen to be some of the players that basketball fans will be drawn to check out.
The ACC needs to be in the business of promoting its best players, best teams and best coaches.
Controlling the narrative on the league matters when the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee is gathered in a room in February and March trying to decide what bubble teams are worthy of a bid and what would be the appropriate seed to match.
Having a freshman trio absent in Charlotte wouldn’t be a big deal if there were a lineup of veteran players or returnees who were already proven in the spotlight.
Advertisement
N.C. State’s Darrion Williams is one such player.
The transfer from Texas Tech helped power the Red Raiders to the Elite Eight last season. His commitment immediately upped the expectations for what new coach Will Wade can accomplish in his first season in Raleigh.
But there are few newcomers like Williams in the league.
Among the top 50 transfers ranked by 247Sports, the ACC secured eight of them. Now compare that with 16 headed to the Big Ten, which had eight of the top 26 players. The SEC claimed 14, including Arizona State’s former five-star recruit Jayden Quaintance, who transferred to Kentucky.
Advertisement
Phillips spoke on Tuesday about the league’s “ongoing strategic efforts to enhance our men’s basketball success.” That included the announcement from May that it would return to 18 conference games instead of 20, to give scheduling flexibility in the nonconference slate for member schools to take on other Power Four opponents.
The thought is that if the league does well it would restore the ACC’s ability to claim as many NCAA Tournament bids as are warranted.
“The decision to return to an 18-game conference schedule was announced in May as part of our clear and intentional approach to enhancing men’s basketball and ensuring it is best positioned for the future,” Phillips said.
What it doesn’t account for is that the best talent wins games more often than not. So when the league returns to cultivating talent, it should return to winning at the highest level.
Advertisement
Duke is excused from the conversation as the only program that has perennially recruited top-five classes and flooded the NBA with draft picks over the past few seasons that have included major changes in college basketball.
Louisville is positioned for the future. U of L coach Pat Kelsey‘s signing of Brown was like a salvo that established how he plans on recruiting moving forward.
And when the league has the players, it will have something to boast about. That’s the only way the ACC will begin to regain the swagger of old.
Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: ACC basketball needs to promote better. NCAA selections depend on it
