Before the focus fully shifts to next season, we’re dedicating time to evaluating the 2024-25 men’s college basketball season.
After starting this series with the Big East, we’ve outlined our report card for each of the 18 ACC teams below.
Part of this process is straightforward: A good team that played like a good team will earn a strong grade, and a good team that played like a bad team will not. But it will be complicated for certain teams. Some had championship dreams. Others hoped to win just one game. Either way, we are judging each squad’s season based on preseason expectations while offering 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 two key contributors from a team that made a run to the Elite Eight in 2023-24: PJ Hall, an all-ACC first team selection in 2023-24 who now plays for the Denver Nuggets, and five-year veteran guard Joe Girard III. But Brad Brownell regrouped from the turnover as well as any coach in America could. Chase Hunter and Ian Schieffelin emerged as elite players in the ACC. And Jaeden Zackery and Viktor Lakhin, a pair of transfers, emerged as standouts for a Tigers squad that won 27 games, gave Duke its only ACC loss of the year and earned a 5-seed in the NCAA tournament.
Grade: A
Most head coaches have embraced the transfer portal era by stacking rosters with upperclassmen, but Jon Scheyer had the best season of his tenure with first-year players, led by Cooper Flagg — the projected No. 1 pick in June’s NBA draft — who became just the fourth freshman to win the Wooden Award.
Duke dominated the ACC and made a run to the Final Four, where the Blue Devils had a late lead over Houston in the national semifinal loss. While they did not ultimately cut down the nets as they were favored to do, the Blue Devils made the first Final Four run of the Scheyer era and enjoyed part of the season as the No. 1 team in America.
Editor’s Picks
2 Related
Grade: A
When Georgia Tech hired Damon Stoudamire in 2023, the Yellow Jackets had reached the NCAA tournament only once since 2010. The program’s favorable location in Atlanta has not given the school an advantage in the recruiting market in recent years, which is why Stoudamire’s steps toward making the Yellow Jackets nationally relevant again matter. They finished 17-17 overall and 10-10 in the ACC (eighth) — just their third .500 season in conference play since 2006-07.
Stoudamire, whose team finished 7-3 over its final 10 ACC games, continues to make progress.
Grade: A
A year after stumbling in his third season at Wisconsin, Chucky Hepburn bounced back upon transferring to Louisville to earn an AP All-American honorable mention in the Cardinals’ first campaign of the Pat Kelsey era.
Kelsey was so successful in his reboot of this program that an “A” grade is still likely insufficient in measuring what he achieved in Year 1: a second-place finish in the ACC, the Cardinals’ first 27-win campaign in a decade and an 8-seed in the NCAA tournament. He quickly put his stamp on a name-brand program that had struggled for years before his arrival, winning more games in his 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. Picked to finish 13th in their first season as part of the ACC, they ended the year in a three-way tie for fourth place with Wake Forest and North Carolina. They also finished top-20 nationally in 3-point shooting percentage and very well might have made the NCAA tournament if Boopie Miller (13.2 PPG) hadn’t been injured for the last month of the season.
Grade: A
In Kyle Smith’s first season as head coach, Stanford won 21 games for the first time in a decade. The Cardinal had been picked to finish 17th out of 18 teams in the ACC’s preseason poll, but Maxime Raynaud (20.2 PPG, 10.6 RPG) blossomed into one of the best players in America as they finished 11-9 in their first season in the conference.
The Cardinal didn’t have a particularly difficult schedule, but still exceeded expectations in a transition year for the program.
B grades
Grade: B
Leonard Hamilton deserved a better finish to his storied run at Florida State, which included eight NCAA tournament appearances with three Sweet 16 runs and a trip to the Elite Eight in 23 seasons. Still, the program’s 17-15 overall record was far from a collapse, and the Seminoles finished in a multiteam tie for ninth place in the ACC after being picked to finish 15th in the league’s preseason poll — a notable effort given the midseason announcement of Hamilton’s resignation.
Grade: B
Tony Bennett’s unexpected retirement in October was a shock to the program that he had led to a national championship in 2019. With only a month until the start of the season, interim head coach Ron Sanchez was thrown into a unique — and unfair — situation as he tried to refocus a team full of players who assumed they would be playing for Bennett.
A middle-of-the-pack finish (tied for ninth) was beneath preseason expectations, but 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 first season at Cal, which was 10 more than the Bears had won the season before (2022-23). But he couldn’t build on that tally in 2024-25 during the program’s first campaign in the ACC. Cross-country treks were a challenging adjustment for Cal and rival Stanford. And North Dakota transfer BJ Omot missed all but four games because of injury. Still, the Bears didn’t continue to improve, which is the goal in a rebuild.
Grade: C
After a tough loss to Louisville in February, Micah Shrewsberry claimed that Notre Dame would prove the doubters wrong. “A lot of people have given up on this team,” he said at the time. “They’ve given up on me. I don’t really give a damn.” But his team didn’t make a major leap in his second 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 had a shot and failed to seize the moment.
After a 12-2 start (including 3-0 in ACC play), early bracket projections forecast a clear path to the NCAA tournament. The Panthers then lost 12 of their next 17 games. And despite close losses in quality-win opportunities against Clemson, Louisville and North Carolina, they ruined their résumé with multiple losses to sub-75 KenPom teams in the final weeks of the season.
A healthy Damian Dunn (missed 16 games) might have made a difference.
Grade: C
Adrian Autry’s second season featured more lows than highs. Syracuse won only 14 games after winning 20 in his first season after succeeding legendary head coach Jim Boeheim. Eddie Lampkin Jr. (11.5 PPG, 9.6 RPG), a star transfer from Colorado, couldn’t 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 worse by KenPom indicates.
Grade: C
In his sixth season at Virginia Tech, Mike Young had to replace four of his five starters with two entering the portal and two graduating, a scenario a number of coaches endured this season but netted varying results. Picked to finish 14th in the preseason poll, the Hokies finished in a multiteam tie for ninth place to exceed projections. Losses to Jacksonville, Boston College and Cal, however, were also a sign of the team’s decline from the previous season.
D grades
Grade: D
Earl Grant endured the worst season of his tenure 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 top returning scorer on a roster led by new faces. But that type of turnover is common in college basketball, and Boston College finished 4-16 in an ACC that sent just four teams to the NCAA tournament for the first time in more than a decade.
Grade: D
NC State’s run to the Final Four was the most magical story of the 2024 NCAA tournament; the Wolfpack rode a nine-game winning streak that featured two wins over Duke to the national semifinal. Jayden Taylor and Ben Middlebrooks were the only returning players from that team, but in an ACC filled with opportunities to win more games, the Wolfpack went 5-15 in conference play and 12-19 overall. Picked to finish eighth in the ACC’s preseason poll, NC State finished 16th out of 18 teams in the conference, leading to the firing of Kevin Keatts.
Grade: D
By North Carolina’s standards, this season’s team fell way short. The Tar Heels received 11 first-place votes in the ACC’s preseason poll, but instead of battling Duke for the conference title as expected, they finished fifth in the standings and were largely considered the most undeserving at-large team on Selection Sunday.
RJ Davis, the only returning AP first-team All-American in the country, didn’t even secure an honorable mention nod. North Carolina also lost all three of its games against Duke by 33 combined points, despite Cooper Flagg missing the last of those matchups.
Grade: D
The Demon Deacons seemed like they could play their way into the conference race. Hunter Sallis, a first-team all-ACC first team selection, returned to anchor a group that matched the previous season’s 21-win tally. But they didn’t make the NCAA tournament because of missed opportunities 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 failed to accrue enough wins to impress the selection committee.
F grades
Grade: F
There are no silver linings here.
The Hurricanes were picked to finish sixth in the ACC’s preseason poll before falling apart in a disastrous season that featured Jim Larranaga’s surprise resignation in late December. The injury to standout Nijel Pack, who played only nine games, had already put them in a difficult spot — but Larranaga’s departure forced them to tread water for three months, finishing at the bottom of the ACC only two seasons removed from their first trip to the Final Four, when they seemed poised to thrive in the current college basketball climate.
