These days, the countdown to the college basketball season is a time to get used to change.
This is particularly true in the ACC entering the 2024-25 campaign.
Louisville Basketball fans know everything about the new head coach Pat Kelsey and its completely revised list, which was constructed almost entirely through the NCAA Transfer Portal. The 49-year-old Cincinnati native is once again trying to make the program relevant for the right reasons after going 12-52 (5-35 ACC) against the former coach. Kenny PayneThe terrible two-year term.
Certainly, the Cardinals have experienced the most seismic changes in the ACC this offseason; and Kelsey’s rebuilding will loom large as she tries to keep pace with others across the country. But there is no shortage of striking new faces elsewhere.
For starters, the league has grown from 15 to 18 members and now stretches from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific. Add in a new crop of talented freshmen and the usual roster shake-up of the portal era, and you have a lot of catching up to do.
Here’s an overview of all the changes:
New members: California, SMU and Stanford
Most early projections from the ACC are not optimistic about new members California, SMU and Stanford. But whatever the programs’ outcome in the first year, their arrival will be felt in many ways.
First – and most important: Only the top 15 teams in the final regular season standings will earn spots in the conference tournament, which takes place March 11-15 at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The second: week-long cross-country road trips.
SMU is the most intriguing of the new additions entering 2024-25. His regime change to groom the Power Four ranks — firing coach Rob Lanier after a 20-13 season and luring Andy Enfield away from USC — was one of the first dominoes to fall. John Calipari leaves Kentucky after 15 seasons for Arkansas. Enfield signed group of seven transfers that ranks 40th in analytics guru’s eyes Evan Miyakawa of EvanMiya.com. According to AthleticsThe Mustangs’ roster is among the top three in the conference in Division I minutes played and 3-pointers made.
Behind Kelsey, Cal’s Mark Madsen was the most active ACC coach in the portal this offseason after losing his top seven players in terms of minutes played during a 13-19 start to Berkeley’s tenure. The Golden Bears’ collection of 10 transfers ranks 32nd on EvanMiya. It’s a step in the right direction for a program looking to cross the 15-win threshold for the first time since 2016-17.
Stanford’s Kyle Smith, who joined the Cardinal from Washington State, rounds out the ACC’s trio of first-year head coaches. He faces the most daunting challenge of the bunch, ending an NCAA Tournament drought dating back to 2014 with a roster ranked second-to-last in the conference in DI minutes played and 3 made.
Louisville will travel to SMU on January 21. He finished the regular season with back-to-back games against Cal (March 5) and Stanford (March 8) at KFC Yum! Center.
The five-star freshmen, headlined by Duke’s Cooper Flagg
No conference in the country has signed more five-star recruits than the ACC’s nine.
They are, in order of their general ranking on the 247Sports Composite:
Flagg, a 6-foot-9 forward from Maine, is considered a generational talent and the projected No. 1 pick in next year’s NBA draft. If he lives up to his expectations, he could become just the fourth freshman to be crowned Naismith College Player of the Year. And the scary thing is, we’re only scratching the surface of Duke’s vaunted 2024 class as the Blue Devils enter coach Jon Scheyer’s third season as one of the favorites in the ACC and national championship races.
The North Carolina Archer and his two five-star signees will certainly be in the mix with Jackson and Powell as projected one-and-done talents; especially considering the Tar Heels return the conference’s reigning Player of the Year first and foremost, All-American guard RJ Davis.
Ultimately, the ACC could be decided by which team has assembled the best players to bolster its star power, which brings us to our final segment.
Transfers: who found the gold on the portal?
The ACC’s performance in the transfer portal varies depending on your trusted source for player ratings.
For example: Le3 and EvanMiya ranked Kelsey’s inaugural class at Louisville No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, but she did not crack the top 25 on 247Sports. The highest ACC team on this list was Duke at No. 22, followed by NC State at No. 24.
The Cards, however, led the conference with four top-100 transfer additions over Athletics And ESPNThese are big boards. Miami was the only other one to have multiple players out of the two, with two each.
Of course, this ranking won’t mean anything when the season begins on November 4 and we see how all the new pieces fit together. It’s also important to note that 11 of the 18 ACC teams added fewer than five players through the portal.
What transfers should you monitor? Very few of them will be as important to their teams as Terrence Edwards Jr. (James Madison), Chucky Hepburn (Wisconsin), J’Vonne Hadley (Colorado) and Kasean Pryor (South Florida) will be at U of L.
Elsewhere, Duke will need Maliq Brown (Syracuse), Mason Gillis (Purdue) and Sion James (Tulane) to balance out its freshman roster; while Cade Tyson (Belmont) and Ven-Allen Lubin (Vanderbilt) play important roles in North Carolina. The same goes for Viktor Lakhin (Cincinnati) and Jaeden Zackery (Boston College) at Clemson and Jalen Blackmon (Stetson) and Lynn Kidd (Virginia Tech) at Miami.
Then there are the former Cards roaming the league: Matt Cross (SMU), Brandon Huntley-Hatfield (NC State), Mike James (NC State), Ty-Laur Johnson (Wake Forest) and Jae-Lyn Withers (Carolina of the North). ).
Contact Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.
This article was originally published in the Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville Basketball Team and Pat Kelsey Add New Faces for ACC MBB