Grading how every males’s ACC basketball group carried out in 2024-25

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  • 40 “/ > Myron MedcalfMay 7, 2025, 09:00 AM ET Close Covers college basketball
  • Joined ESPN.com in 2011
  • Graduate of Minnesota State University, Mankato

Before the focus totally moves to next season, we’re devoting time to evaluating the 2024-25 males’s college basketball season.After beginning this series with the Big East, we’ve detailed our report card for each of the 18 ACC groups below.Part of this process is straightforward: A great team that played like a great team will earn a strong grade, and a great team that played like a bad group will not. But it will be complicated for particular groups. Some had champion dreams. Others intended to win simply one game. In either case, we are judging each team’s season based upon preseason expectations while using grace on a case-by-case basis for any unfortunate midseason events.Check back each Wednesday in May as we grade the rest of the power conferences with the Big Ten on May 14, Big 12 on May 21 and SEC on May 28. But for now, let’s dive into the ACC.Note: Teams listed in alphabetical order under each grading tier.Jump to a team: Boston College|California|Clemson|Duke|Florida State |

Georgia Tech|Louisville|Miami|NC State|North Carolina|Notre Dame|Pittsburgh|SMU|Stanford|Syracuse|Virginia|Virginia Tech|Wake Forest A grades Grade: A The Tigers lost 2 key contributors from a team that made a run to the Elite 8 in 2023-24: PJ Hall, an all-ACC first string choice in 2023-24 who now bets the Denver Nuggets, and five-year veteran guard Joe Girard III. But Brad Brownell regrouped from the turnover along with any coach in America could. Chase Hunter and Ian Schieffelin became elite players in the ACC. And Jaeden Zackery and Viktor Lakhin, a set of transfers, became standouts for a Tigers team that won 27 games, gave Duke its only ACC loss of the year and earned a 5-seed in the NCAA competition. Grade: A Most head coaches have actually welcomed the transfer portal era by stacking lineups with upperclassmen, but Jon Scheyer had the very best season of his tenure with first-year players

, led by Cooper Flagg– the predicted No. 1 pick in June’s NBA draft– who became simply the 4th freshman to win the Wood Award.Duke dominated the ACC and made a go to the Final 4, where the Blue Devils had a late lead over Houston in the national semifinal loss. While they did not ultimately lower the internet as they were favored to do, the Blue Devils made the first Last 4 run of the Scheyer era and took pleasure in part of the season as the No. 1 group in America.Editor’s Picks 2 Associated Grade: A When Georgia Tech hired Damon Stoudamire in 2023, the Yellow Jackets had reached the NCAA tournament only as soon as

because 2010. The program’s beneficial

area

in Atlanta has actually not provided the school a benefit in the recruiting market in the last few years, which is why Stoudamire’s actions towards making the Yellow Jackets nationally appropriate once again matter. They completed 17-17 overall and 10-10 in the ACC(8th )– simply their third.500 season in conference play given that 2006-07. Stoudamire, whose group finished 7-3 over its last 10 ACC games, continues to make development. Grade: A year after stumbling in his 3rd season at Wisconsin, Chucky Hepburn bounced back upon moving to Louisville to earn an AP All-American honorable reference in the Cardinals’very first campaign of the Pat Kelsey era.Kelsey was so successful in his reboot of this program that an”A”grade is still likely inadequate in determining what he accomplished in Year 1: a second-place finish in the ACC, the Cardinals’very first 27-win campaign in a years and an 8-seed in the NCAA tournament.

He quickly put his stamp on a name-brand program that had actually struggled for many years before his arrival, winning more games in his very first season at the helm than the Cardinals had won in the previous three combined. Grade: A The Mustangs experienced a significant improvement after Andy Enfield arrived from USC. Selected to complete 13th in their very first season as part of the

ACC, they

ended the year in a three-way tie for 4th location with Wake Forest and North Carolina. They also ended up top-20 nationally in 3-point shooting portion and effectively may have made the NCAA tournament if Boopie Miller(13.2 PPG )had not been hurt for the last month of the season. Grade: A In Kyle Smith’s very first season as head coach, Stanford won 21 games for the first time in a years. The Cardinal had been selected to end up 17th out of 18 groups in the ACC’s preseason survey, however Maxime Raynaud (20.2 PPG, 10.6

RPG )progressed into one of the very best players in America as they ended up 11-9 in their first season in the conference.The Cardinal didn’t have an especially difficult schedule, but still surpassed expectations in a transition year for the program.B grades Grade: B Leonard Hamilton was worthy of a better surface to his storied run at Florida State, which included 8 NCAA tournament looks with 3

Sugary food 16 runs and a trip to the Elite 8 in 23 seasons. Still, the program’s 17-15 total record was far from a collapse, and the Seminoles finished in a multiteam tie for ninth place in the ACC after being picked to end up 15th in the league’s preseason survey– a notable effort given the midseason announcement of Hamilton’s resignation. Grade: B Tony Bennett’s unforeseen retirement in October was a shock to the program that he had actually led to a championship game in 2019. With just a month till the start of the season, interim head coach Ron Sanchez was thrown into a distinct– and unjust– circumstance as he attempted to refocus a team full of players who assumed they would be playing for Bennett.A middle-of-the-pack surface(connected for ninth)was underneath preseason expectations, however considering those expectations predated Bennett’s announcement, Sanchez made the most of the mess he was given.C grades Grade: C Mark Madsen won 13 games in his very first season

at Cal, which was 10 more than the Bears had actually won the season before(2022-23 ). But he couldn’t develop on that tally in 2024-25 throughout the program’s very first campaign in the ACC.

Cross-country

treks were a challenging modification for Cal and competing Stanford. And North Dakota transfer BJ Omot missed out on all however 4 games because of injury. Still, the Bears didn’t continue to improve, which is the goal in a reconstruct. Grade: C After a difficult loss to Louisville in February, Micah Shrewsberry claimed that Notre Dame would prove the doubters wrong.”A great deal of individuals have actually given up on this team,”he stated at the time.”They’ve quit on me. I do not actually offer a damn.” However his team didn’t make a major

leap in his 2nd season, with its leading scorer Markus Burton(21.3 PPG )and Braeden Shrewsberry( 14.0 PPG)missing 15 combined games because of injuries. Grade: C Pitt took a crack at and failed to seize the moment.After a 12-2 start (including 3-0 in ACC play), early bracket projections forecast

a clear

course to the NCAA competition. The Panthers then lost 12 of their next 17 games. And in spite of close losses in quality-win opportunities versus Clemson, Louisville and North Carolina, they destroyed their résumé with multiple losses to sub-75 KenPom groups in the last weeks of the season.A healthy Damian Dunn(missed out on 16 games)may have made a difference. Grade: C Adrian Autry’s 2nd season included more lows than highs. Syracuse won only 14 games after winning 20 in his very first season after prospering famous head coach Jim Boeheim. Eddie Lampkin Jr.(11.5 PPG, 9.6 RPG),

a star transfer from Colorado, could not help the Orange avoid turbulence. And Donnie Freeman (13.4 PPG, 7.9 RPG )suffered a season-ending injury.The bar is much higher at Syracuse than the five losses it suffered to teams ranked 90th or even worse by KenPom indicates.

Grade: C In his sixth season at Virginia Tech, Mike Young needed to replace four of his 5 beginners with two going into the portal and 2 finishing, a circumstance a variety of coaches endured this season but netted varying results. Selected to finish 14th in the preseason poll, the Hokies finished in a multiteam tie for ninth location to surpass projections. Losses to Jacksonville, Boston College and Cal, however, were also a sign of the team’s decrease from the previous season.D grades Grade: D Earl Grant sustained the worst season of his period after losing his top five scorers from a team that had won 20 games in 2023-24.

Donald Hand Jr.

(5.0 PPG in 2023-24)was the leading returning scorer on a lineup led by new faces. But that kind of turnover is common in college basketball, and Boston College ended up 4-16 in an ACC that sent out just four groups to the NCAA competition for the first time in more than a years. Grade: D NC State’s run to the Final 4 was the most wonderful story of the 2024 NCAA competition; the Wolfpack rode a nine-game winning streak that included 2 wins over Duke to the national semifinal. Jayden Taylor and Ben Middlebrooks were the only returning players from that team, however in an ACC filled with opportunities to win more games, the Wolfpack went 5-15 in conference play and 12-19 total. Picked to finish 8th in the ACC’s preseason poll, NC State completed 16th out of 18 groups in the conference, causing the firing of Kevin Keatts. Grade: D By North Carolina’s requirements, this season’s group fell way short.

The Tar Heels

received 11 first-place votes in the ACC’s preseason survey, however instead of battling Duke for the conference title as expected, they finished fifth in the standings and were mainly considered the most undeserving at-large group on Selection Sunday.RJ Davis, the only returning AP first-team All-American in the nation, didn’t even secure a respectable mention nod.

North Carolina also lost all 3 of its games against Duke by 33 combined points, regardless of Cooper Flagg missing out on the last of those matches.

Grade: D

The Demon Deacons seemed like they might play their method into the conference race. Hunter Sallis, a first-team all-ACC first team choice, went back to anchor a group that matched the previous season’s 21-win tally. But they didn’t make the NCAA competition since of missed out on chances down the final stretch of the season with losses to Florida State, NC State and Virginia in the closing weeks of the 2024-25 campaign.In a lackluster ACC, Wake Forest stopped working to accumulate sufficient wins to impress the choice committee.F grades Grade: F There are no silver linings here.The Hurricanes were chosen to finish 6th in the ACC’s preseason survey before breaking down in a devastating season that featured Jim Larranaga’s surprise resignation in late December. The injury to standout Nijel Pack, who played just nine games, had already put them in a hard area– but Larranaga’s departure forced them to tread water for 3 months, ending up at the bottom of the ACC only two seasons eliminated from their first trip to the Last Four, when they seemed poised to grow in the current college basketball environment.