ACC Coaching: Is It Getting Better?

The other day, we linked to a story about the worst basketball coaching hires of the 21st century, and saw that about 1/3 of the list had been ACC coaches.

While NIL is more important than ever, our argument has been that everything starts with the coach you hire. It’s the single most important factor in a program succeeding or failing.

This chart lists and ranks the current ACC coaches. Some of it is kind of random. As excited as we are that Boston College hired Luke Murray, the guy has never been

a head coach. So how can you rank him #10? Why rank Ryan Odom ahead of Brad Brownell? He’s only been at Virginia for one year. It was a great year, but still, it’s just one.

It’s a subjective list, naturally, but it’s still useful. Let’s look at each coach and where his school is now. At the end, we’ll see if the programs are improving, declining, or stable.

• Jon Scheyer. It seemed impossible that Duke would not fall off after Mike Krzyzewski retired. Well, it hasn’t happened. Scheyer has done an astonishing job, literally one of one, because no one has ever followed a legend this well. In fact, Duke is arguably better.
• Ryan Odom. We’ll leave Ron Sanchez out of it, because he got left holding the bag when Tony Bennett walked away. So far, he’s been great, and Virginia is entertaining to watch. Check back in a couple of years for a better idea of where he stands.
• Brad Brownell. The current dean of ACC coaches, Brownell has been at Clemson since 2010, and he’s the best coach Clemson has had, hands down. He’s a great coach at a school with some limitations.
• Jai Lucas. One year in, he’s a rising star. He’ll have some work to do to match Jim Larranaga, but he appears fully capable of doing it.
• Pat Kelsey. It sounds funny, but this feels like a make-or-break year for Kelsey. Not that he’s a bad coach, but that after his brilliant first season, he took some heat from Louisville fans last year. This year, he’s spending like he has a sugar daddy, and has put together a tremendous roster. If the fans think he’s struggling again, they’ll let him know. They are from the state of Kentucky, after all. Our take? He’s earned a ton of respect, and breathing life into the comatose body of Louisville basketball after Kenny Payne ran over it, backed up, and did it again, is one of the great coaching jobs of our lifetimes.
• Michael Malone. UNC made a mistake hiring Hubert Davis in 2021. His tenure was marked by erratic performance on the court and a hard-to-define element of strangeness. UNC could have gone on as a marginal presence in college basketball, but no one over there wanted that. Can Malone restore the program? We’ll see. He’s got a solid record, but his best years were when he had Nikola Jokic, a phenomenal talent. There is no Joker at UNC. We’ll know soon just how good Malone is.
• Kyle Smith. An analytics devotee, Smith is well-regarded. Since he started at Columbia in 2010, Smith has had one losing season. That may be tough to maintain this year. Everyone has struggled at Stanford since the brilliant Mike Montgomery retired in 2004. Smith may be brilliant, but between admissions and NIL resources, it’s not going to be easy.
• Andy Enfield. Widely regarded as an offensive mastermind, his career winning percentage is just .604. SMU hired him to make a splash in the ACC, but has he? Not so much.
• Luke Loucks. After Leonard Hamilton retired, FSU basically lost its entire mediocre roster, downgraded on the rebuild, and started off last season like it was going to be historically bad. By the end of the year, no one wanted to play the ‘Noles. It’s just one year, but he’s immensely promising.
• Luke Murray. Over the last few years, during hiring season, we kept asking why Ben McCollum and Luke Murray weren’t getting more attention. McCollum has made his case at Drake and Iowa, and now we’ll see about Murray. Widely regarded as the architect of UConn’s highly effective offense, he steps in at Boston College after a decade and a half of sheer futility. He has to get players, and NIL is a real concern, but does he have the chops? He certainly appears to.
• Steve Forbes is a very good coach, but Wake Forest doesn’t have the money to compete. Pete Carrill could have squared that circle, but very few others can overcome what Forbes is up against.
• Mark Madsen. He’s building, and look at Cal’s last several coaches. Cuonzo Martin wasn’t horrible but he didn’t want to stick around. Wyking Jones and Mark Fox were awful. We’d like Cal to do well, but it won’t be easy. The guy works hard though, and he’s an improvement, so maybe.
• Mike Young. He’s proven he can coach, but Virginia Tech hasn’t invested enough in basketball for him to succeed at a high level.
• Scott Cross is utterly unproven at the ACC level, and Georgia Tech has wandered the wilderness for some time. Jury’s out.
• Jeff Capel. He’s stuck in a similar situation as Forbes and Young. He’s proven he can coach, but the money isn’t where it needs to be. Firing him won’t fix that. Pitt needs to commit.
• Micah Shrewsberry. We were optimistic about Shrewsberry, but he seems pretty volatile, and like some other schools, basketball is a distant second priority to football. Notre Dame needs to step up.
• Gerry McNamara. Well, he showed us a lot in March, as Siena gave Duke fits. We’re sold. He just needs to do it now. Syracuse also needs to commit to the program.
• Justin Gainey. So far, he hasn’t made a false move since taking over at NC State. He’s building for the future, which is what you want, really. No more one-year blunders.

Improving, declining, or stable?

• Duke – stable at a minimum and possibly improving, which is kind of low-key amazing, considering where the program is already.
• Virginia – improving.
• Clemson – stable
• Miami – improving
• Louisville – stable at a minimum
• UNC – hard to say yet, but grounds for optimism at least. We’ll go with improving.
• Stanford – probably declining since Ebuka Okorie stayed in the draft. However, he gets props for turning that unknown into a first-round draft pick.
• SMU – Enfield has done better than his predecessor, Rob Lanier, but was it a home run hire? Not so far. Improving, but not as much as SMU wants.
• Florida State – definitely improving, with the caveat that it’s just one year. Let’s see how Loucks does this time around.
• Boston College – Murray was a tremendous assistant, but he’s never run his own program. Still, you had to find out. If he’s great, maybe you can lock him in. Earl Grant was a fighter, but he never turned the corner. So we’d say an improvement.
• Steve Forbes – with better players, he’d have a better record. Until Wake is willing to spend, the Deacs are going to struggle. Stable, but should be better.
• Mike Young – a really good coach with limited options. Stable, but like Wake, should be better.
• Scott Cross – hopefully improving, but who knows?
• Jeff Capel – stable? Pitt could go either way this season. He’s overhauled his roster, so it’s really tough to know. But Pitt isn’t spending top dollar, either. Could be his last year at Pitt.
• Micah Shrewsberry – definitely declining. He needs a good year, but probably won’t get one.
• Gerry McNamara – it sure looks like the guy can coach, but his two-year record is a modest 22-18. However, he did turn Siena around and gave #1 Duke a bit of a scare in March. There are a lot of obstacles, but would you rather have him or Adrian Autry? Yeah, same here. We’d say improving.
• Justin Gainey. Improvement if only because he wants to be there and wouldn’t pull a Will Wade. However, he also seems to be building intelligently. He’s got a lot of work to do, but seems committed. State fans are going to give him a lot of room.

So while some guys may be on the hot seat, in general, ACC coaching is in a much better place than it was a few years ago. And that’s good for everyone.

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