RALEIGH, N.C. — Four ACC basketball teams made the NCAA Tournament in 2025. Five teams made it in each of the three years before that. The Mountain West earned more bids (6) in 2024.

The ACC has not received more than five tournament bids since 2021, which is a slide and knocks some shine off the league, causing a widespread indictment.

Enter: new coaches, bigger budgets and a new scheduling model.

The ACC announced in May the return to an 18-game conference schedule in hopes of taking “a clear and intentional approach to enhancing men’s basketball.” The goal is to strengthen marketing and branding efforts, while providing a better balance of conference and non-conference games.

To put it plainly: Conference leaders and stakeholders wanted to revitalize the ACC’s reputation and create more NCAA Tournament-caliber teams.

To this point, it has worked.

“Investment equals expectation, and I think that the ACC and administrations and athletic departments decided they want to not just have a basketball team, but back to being the ACC; a dominant conference,” Seth Greenberg, ESPN analyst and former Virginia Tech head coach, said during a media call earlier this month. “If you look at it, the return on the investments have been pretty good.”

A ‘substantially improved’ ACC

ESPN analyst and former Duke standout Jay Bilas called the ACC “substantially improved.” Bilas said he doesn’t think there has been a better conference from top to bottom than last season’s SEC, which had 14 of its 16 teams in the NCAA Tournament. He called it “unfathomable.”

Bilas also said he thought the ACC had a historically down year least season, and it could have contributed to the SEC’s success. But, Bilas said, the ACC is in a much better position this season.

The ACC’s resume speaks loudly. The league finished 7-9 in the ACC-SEC Challenge, a major improvement from its 2-14 record in 2024.

“I can’t say that I think the ACC is better than the SEC this year, but it’s in the ballpark. It’s competitive,” Bilas said. “The league now, the way that it works, in my view, is the league strength is determined by the league’s non-conference results. The non-conference results are substantially better this year than last year.”

The ACC’s improvement surpasses the Challenge’s two-day lineups of matchups, Bilas said. The numbers support him, too. Emboldened by the new scheduling model and encouragement to schedule more high major games, many ACC teams are reaping the benefits.

A breakdown of ACC basketball so far this season

As of the morning of Dec. 22:

— Nine teams rank in the top 50 of the NET. That is tied with the SEC for the most of any conference. The ACC has 10 teams in the top 65. Last season, the ACC finished with only five top 50 teams in the NET.

— Eight teams currently rank in the KenPom top 50 and only three are outside the top 100. At the end of last season, five teams were top 50 in KenPom. Seven were below 100 and two — Boston College and Miami — were below 180. Boston College, which is currently the lowest-rated ACC team, has a KenPom rating of 144. Miami is No. 34.

— The ACC has 10 wins over a ranked opponent, with roughly half a dozen teams accounting for those wins. That is No. 2 out of all conferences.

— Fifteen of the 18 ACC teams have at least one victory over a Power Four team, for a total of 37 non-conference wins over power conference teams. The ACC finished with 19 last season.

— The league boasts 16 Quad 1 wins, which leads all conferences, from 10 different programs. Duke has four, which is tied for No. 1 in the nation.

— Other accomplishments include, but are not limited to, four ranked ACC teams and seven others have received votes in at least one poll. There have been 24 100-point games, tying the conference record set in 1989-90. It has 65 wins of at least 20 points.

— Currently, the ACC features 10 teams with at least 10 victories. Another three finished with nine wins in non-conference play.

How are individual ACC basketball teams faring?

— No. 3 Duke, which started 11-0, leads the league with wins over Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, Florida and Michigan State.

— No. 11 Louisville picked up wins over Kentucky and Indiana.

— No. 12 North Carolina also beat Kentucky and Kansas, as well as Ohio State. All three are in the top 20 of the NET rankings and have multiple Quad 1 wins.

— N.C. State ranks 31 in the NET and 25 in KenPom. The Wolfpack ended last season ranked No. 133 and No. 125, respectively. The 2025-26 squad is among the teams with a Quad 1 win and finally beat a P4 opponent in its victory over Mississippi on Sunday.

— Virginia, led by first-year Cavaliers coach Ryan Odom, sits at 10-1, with wins over Texas, Dayton and Northwestern.

— California, picked to finish No. 16 in the conference, started 12-1 with a neutral site win over UCLA.

“There’s no question the ACC is significantly better, and I’m pleased and energized by the league’s collective successes already this season,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said in a statement to The News & Observer. “The improvement is a tribute to our coaches and student-athletes, along with the tremendous support and commitment to competing at the highest level by the chancellors, presidents and athletic directors. The success of our teams in the nonconference portion of the season will position us well as we enter conference play and ultimately look ahead to March.”

ACC improvement is based on ‘a confluence’ of factors

Multiple variables have led to the ACC’s turnaround. Flexibility when building schedules helped, but so has playing competitively in those games. It’s taken the right hires, the right players, a collaborative effort to market the conference, and, frankly, money to help the turnaround.

“A confluence of things happened to the ACC,” Bilas said.

The former national champion, as an assistant coach at Duke in 1991 and 1992, also acknowledged the major coaching shift in the ACC. It had a number of longtime, highly-successful coaches age out of the profession. Tony Bennett, Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski, Mike Brey, Jim Larrañaga, Leonard Hamilton and Jim Boeheim all retired in the last five years, most in the last three.

Having those departures occur in such a short time span hurt the ACC. Programs, even those not replacing highly-successful coaches, didn’t always make the right hires. The conference, however, has a solid group of young coaches — Odom, Will Wade, Jai Lucas — in place who can help elevate it as they progress in their careers.

Those coaches have also been given more financial resources to obtain or retain competitive players who fit a coach’s system.

“You can lose with really good players, but you’re not going to win without them.” Bilas said. “Some coaches can do a better job with a certain roster than others.”

Greenberg said he doesn’t know every school’s exact budget, but Syracuse, N.C. State and Virginia are among the programs with increased financial support this season in particular, enabling them to find players who are more competitive on the high major level. He called it the cost of doing business in this era of college basketball.

“I think the league has better coaches in place, has recruited better, and I think the scheduling is better,” Bilas added.

‘Getting back its depth’

The ACC’s nonconference success provides three-fold assistance. It gives the league head-to-head wins over likely tournament teams, provides positive metrics — even in losses — and makes conference wins more valuable.

N.C. State, for example, lost games to Seton Hall, Texas, Auburn and Kansas. It would like to get a couple of those back. Wade said his team is “off to a crappy start.”

The Wolfpack is still expected to make the NCAA Tournament, but it’s in a position where it needs a few big wins in conference play. The situation isn’t ideal, though it’s better than it has been. It still has a chance to win games against the field, with eight or nine expected Quad 1 games and likely three or four Quad 2 matchups in ACC play.

“The league is going to offer them that. They wouldn’t have had that a year ago. There weren’t going to be opportunities to build your resume come conference play,” Bilas said. “Now, because of the depth of the league and the number of teams that you’re going to play that are going to give you opportunities for wins against the field and Quad 1 and Quad 2 wins, you still have plenty of time to build a resume.”

That rings true for other teams, not just N.C. State. SMU, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest and even Notre Dame can improve their resumes to improve their expected seed or move past the bubble.

“I think the league is getting back its depth,” Greenberg said. “The talent level is way up. Recruiting is way up. Style of play has been terrific. … I think it’s going to be an exciting year, because there’s more good teams. When there’s more good teams in November and December, it pays huge dividends come March, in terms of NCAA Tournament bids.”

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