In some respects what they achieved was unique to the times and circumstances, yet in an essential sense entirely the same. And, in any sense, historic in a manner that cannot be minimized.
Only Everett Case, whose uptempo NC State teams did more than any others to immediately establish the ACC as a basketball conference of note, won in his first three ACC Tournaments (1954-56). Case’s Wolfpack won four of the new conference’s first six title-defining tournaments, triumphing again in 1959.
In those
days, the ACC Tournament was winner take all, as each league got a single NCAA bid.
Now, seven decades later, Duke’s Jon Scheyer is following in Case’s footsteps. Sort of.
Case was working with a few advantages. The league tournament was played in its first 13 years at Reynolds Coliseum, State’s home court. Few ACC schools invested significant resources into fielding a competitive basketball program.
Case coached high school ball in Indiana for 23 years before joining NC State. He was 53 years old when the ACC began play, and already had taken a team to the Final Four in 1950, his fourth year at Raleigh. His ACC championship squads in 1955 and 1956 were led by upperclassmen Ronnie Shavlik and Vic Molodet.
Scheyer, in contrast, had never been a head coach when he took over at Duke and immediately steered the Blue Devils to the 2023 ACC Tournament title. He was 35. His freshmen-led Devils came back to win the tournament in 2025, and turned the trick again this season, the 13th repeat champions in the ACC’s 73 years.
Scheyer’s start at Duke, at an ACC school playing as the college game’s highest level, is as impressive, if not as ground-breaking in this era of NIL and instant tranfers, as the celebrated feats of Case long ago.
A very few other coaches mounted similar starts to Scheyer and Case.
Vic Bubas, a former Case assistant, won the ACC Tournament at Duke in 1960, his first year as head coach. He defeated a Wake Forest squad directed by Bones McKinney, a third-year head coach who bounced back with tournament wins in 1961 and 1962, the latter team making Wake’s only Final Four appearance behind big man Len Chappell and guard Billy Packer.
Then Bubas and Duke won in 1963 and 1964, three times in five years, advancing in each case to the Final Four after beating Wake, a participant in five straight ACC title games. Bubas’ Devils won yet again in 1966, a fourth time in seven seasons.
Only two other newly minted ACC head coaches immediately won a league tournament, although Virginia’s Ryan Odom came close in dropping the 74-70 title clash with Duke the other night.
Press Maravich won the tournament in 1965 after stepping in for a terminally ill Case, only to leave for LSU with his son, Pete, after losing the ACC title game to Duke in 1966.
Bill Guthridge, the long-time North Carolina assistant, replaced a retired Dean Smith in 1998 and immediately won the ACC Tournament. “Coach Gut” directed the Tar Heels to the Final Four in ’98, got there again in 2000, and then retired amid ridiculous criticism of his recruiting and his teams’ performance.
It would be another 25 seasons before another newly minted ACC head coach, Jon Scheyer, captured the league tournament title. And did it again in his third year, and again in his fourth.
| DANDY DEBUTS First-Year Coaches Who Won ACC Tournament |
||
|---|---|---|
| First | Coach, School | Proximate |
| 1954 | E. Case, NS | 1955,56,59 |
| 1960 | V. Bubas, D | 1963,64,66 |
| 1965 | P. Maravich, NS | ’66 final |
| 1998 | B. Guthridge, NC | 2000 |
| 2023 | J. Scheyer, D | 2025,26 |
