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Friedlander: Ranking the ACC’s 18 basketball coaches heading into the 2024-25 season
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The ACC was once the gathering place for basketball coaching greatness.
It was more than just the wins and the championships, although the trio of Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim and Roy Williams amassed plenty of both. They combined for more than 3,000 victories and 9 national titles at Duke, Syracuse and North Carolina.
The personalities, their competitiveness and the aura that surrounded them helped make every conference game a must-see event.
But those days are gone.
Retirements among the old guard have thinned the league’s coaching ranks. And now with Virginia’s Tony Bennett abruptly walking away less than 3 weeks before the start of the new season, the ACC finds itself without a single national championship coach for the first time since Michael Jordan helped Dean Smith break the ice in 1981-82.
That void hasn’t just hurt the ACC’s national perception. It has also jumbled the pecking order among the league’s current coaches.
Leonard Hamilton, Jim Larrañaga and Brad Brownell have been around the longest. Larrañaga, Hubert Davis and Kevin Keatts have been to the Final Four, and Jon Scheyer is one of several promising youngsters just getting their feet wet.
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Who’s the new top dog?
Take your pick. But for the sake of argument, here are our rankings among the ACC’s 18 coaches heading into the 2024-25 campaign.
18. Ron Sanchez, Virginia
As the beneficiary of Bennett’s abrupt retirement, Sanchez has the coming season to audition for the job on a permanent basis. It’s still unclear if or how much his Cavaliers will be different from those of his predecessor. But considering that he’s been with Bennett since their days at Washington State and left a head coaching position at Charlotte after winning a CBI championship to return to UVa 2 seasons ago, any tweaks are likely to be minimal. Sanchez was 72-78 in his 5 seasons at Charlotte.
17. Mark Madsen, Cal
A graduate of rival Stanford, Madsen has moved across the Bay to try and help rebuild a Cal program that hasn’t posted a winning record since 2017. Three coaches ago. The former Los Angeles Lakers forward went 13-19 in his debut with the Bears last season. He’s hoping to make the same kind of progression that he did in his previous job at Utah Valley, where he went from a 19-loss season in 2019-20 to 28 wins and an NIT semifinal appearance 4 years later.
16. Damon Stoudamire, Georgia Tech
Stoudamire has all the makings of a standout coach. He has a pedigree as a player at Arizona and the NBA, and as an assistant coach at the highest level with the Boston Celtics. He also has a 20-win season as a college coach during his previous stop at Pacific. But like his Yellow Jackets, who scored wins against North Carolina and Duke last season but still finished below .500 at 14-18, he has some rough edges left to smooth out.
15. Adrian Autry, Syracuse
Autry got off to a strong start as Jim Boeheim’s hand-picked successor. He went 20-12, had a winning ACC record and nearly got the Orange into the postseason in his rookie year as a head coach. Now comes the hard part: Building on that initial success without star guard Judah Mintz, who left a year early, but went undrafted and is currently on the roster of the G-League’s Delaware Blue Coats.
14. Earl Grant, Boston College
A product of Brad Brownell’s coaching tree, Grant earned his shot with the Eagles by putting together a successful 7-season run at College of Charleston, which included a CAA championship and NCAA Tournament appearance in 2018. BC has made progress since his arrival by improving from 13 to 16 wins in Seasons 1-2 to 20 and an NIT bid last season. That still hasn’t translated to success in the ACC standings, though. His teams have yet to finish higher than 10th in the league.
13. Micah Shrewsberry, Notre Dame
Shrewsberry did a nice job by getting Penn State to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in more than a decade and convinced last year’s ACC Rookie of the Year Markus Burton to stick around South Bend for at least 1 more year. But with only 3 seasons of head coaching experience and a 13-20 record in his inaugural campaign with the Irish in 2023-24, the book is still out on how good a coach he is.
12. Pat Kelsey, Louisville
Kelsey is a Skip Prosser protegé whose 110 conference wins in 9 seasons at Winthrop makes him the 2nd-winningest coach in the history of the Big South Conference. He won 4 league titles with the Eagles before moving to College of Charleston and getting to 2 more NCAA Tournaments there. He has both the fiery personality and the coaching chops to clean up the mess left behind by former Cardinals coach Kenny Payne. The biggest question is whether he can translate his success at the mid-major level to the ACC.
11. Steve Forbes, Wake Forest
Nothing has come easy for Forbes. He started his career at the junior college level and moved slowly up the ranks as an assistant, then as a mid-major head coach at East Tennessee State before getting his shot at Wake. A skilled recruiter and extraverted salesman, he’s become known as The Portal Whisperer for his success in evaluating and landing top transfer talent. But while he’s put together 3 straight winning seasons with the Deacons, he’s yet to get over the hump and into the NCAA Tournament.
10. Kyle Smith, Stanford
Smith might still be at Washington State had the Pac-12 not imploded. He was well on the way to building a successful program there, including a 25-win, NCAA Tournament team last season, before taking on the challenge of building a Stanford program that has suffered through 4 straight losing seasons and hasn’t made an NCAA appearance since 2014. Smith, whose coaching style has earned the nickname “Nerdball” because of his heavy reliance on analytics, has a 258-193 career record with previous stops at Columbia and San Francisco.
9. Jeff Capel, Pitt
It took 4 seasons and a lot of patience on the part of now-former athletic director Heather Lyke for Capel to finally find his footing at Pitt. The former Duke point guard, who had previous coaching experience at VCU and Oklahoma before returning to his alma mater as an assistant to Coach K, finally broke through by winning 24 games in 2022-23, Last year’s team went 21-11. Although that wasn’t good enough to end up on the right side of the NCAA bubble, Capel clearly has the Panthers heading in the right direction.
8. Mike Young, Virginia Tech
A late bloomer in the coaching ranks, Young spent 17 seasons at Wofford, winning 299 games and making 5 NCAA Tournament appearances, before finally getting his ACC opportunity at Virginia Tech. His final team with the Terriers won 30 games in 2018-19, including an NCAA Tournament upset of Seton Hall before finally losing a close game to Kentucky in the Round of 32. Several players from that team moved with him to Blacksburg and in 2022 they combined to win the Hokies’ first ACC Tournament championship.
7. Andy Enfield, SMU
Enfield put together 21 or more wins in 7 of the past 9 seasons at Southern Cal. But rather than move to the Big Ten with the Trojans, the veteran coach made the head-scratching move of leaving and taking on the challenge of leading SMU’s much less accomplished program into its first season of ACC competition. Enfield has previous ACC experience as an assistant to Leonard Hamilton at Florida State before gaining prominence as the architect of the amazing “Dunk City” team at Florida Gulf Coast that upset Georgetown on the way to becoming the first 15th seed to advance to the NCAA Sweet 16 in 2013.
6. Leonard Hamilton, Florida State
Hamilton’s teams have fallen off considerably over the past 3 seasons as the old-school coach, like UVa’s Bennett, has struggled to adjust to the new realities of the transfer portal and NIL era. His body of work, however, is Hall of Fame worthy. He’s the longest-tenured coach in the ACC and the winningest coach in Seminoles’ history with 443 wins during his 22 seasons. Combined with previous stops at Oklahoma State and Miami, he has 643 career victories to go with a .567 winning percentage, 12 NCAA Tournament appearances, an ACC championship and 3 conference Coach of the Year awards.
5. Brad Brownell, Clemson
Brownell’s ability to last 14 seasons at his current position is a testament to the relative importance of basketball at football blue-blood like Clemson and the coach’s ability to put together his best seasons when his seat is the hottest. He’s put together a 265-189 record with 4 NCAA Tournament appearances with the Tigers and is on the best run of his tenure with 3 top-5 finishes in the ACC in the past 4 seasons. Last year was by far his best with 24 wins and the first Elite 8 appearance in school history.
4. Kevin Keatts, NC State
Keatts is the prime example of how fickle the coaching profession can be. He entered last year’s ACC Tournament squarely on the hot seat. But after winning 5 games in 5 days to earn State’s first championship in 36 years, then leading an even more miraculous run to the Final Four, he’s suddenly secure with a contract extension and new-found respect. Former Wolfpack athletic director Debbie Yow coined the phrase “Kevin Keatts is a winner” when she hired him following 2 straight NCAA Tournament appearances at UNC Wilmington. Now in his 8th season in Raleigh, he’s finally following through on that promise.
3. Jon Scheyer, Duke
Coach K’s former point guard and understudy has picked up right where his mentor left off by leading the Blue Devils to back-to-back 27-9 seasons. While he has yet to get the Blue Devils to a Final Four or hang another banner from the rafters at Cameron Indoor Stadium, he has progressed from a second-round exit as a rookie coach to the Elite 8 last year. While his coaching acumen is still a work in progress, Scheyer has already distinguished himself as an elite recruiter. His current class, highlighted by projected top overall NBA Draft pick Cooper Flagg, is ranked No. 1 nationally. Scheyer is a rising star who should soon shoot even higher on this list.
2. Hubert Davis, North Carolina
The former UNC shooting guard and ESPN analyst was a surprise choice to succeed Hall of Famer Roy Williams because of his relative lack of coaching experience. But Davis has grown into the job during his 3 seasons, in which he has combined a 78-31 overall record to go along with an NCAA Tournament final appearance in 2022 and a No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed a year ago. While he’s improving steadily as an Xs and Os coach, his strength is his passion for his alma mater, his positive outlook and his ability to bring out the best in his players.
1. Jim Larrañaga, Miami
Overlooked and underappreciated for most of his career with the Hurricanes, Larrañaga finally began gaining the recognition he richly deserves in 2022-23 when he became a first-time nominee for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Although he still hasn’t earned induction to the shrine, he enhanced his candidacy later that season by leading Miami to the Final Four. While it was the school’s first trip to the national semifinals, it was the second time for Larrañaga. He also got there 17 years earlier with George Mason in one of college basketball’s most unlikely postseason runs. Although last year’s injury-riddled team failed to make the tournament, the now 74-year-old coach – who boasts a 740-500 career record – remains at the top of his game.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
