CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WDRB) — In five seasons of competing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, the University of Louisville basketball team has finished better than fourth one time — 2017, Rick Pitino’s farewell season.
Pitino hung up a pair of fourths and a second. The Cardinals sagged to eighth place under David Padgett two years ago and then advanced to sixth last season for Chris Mack.
You know the ACC footprint — Duke, North Carolina, Virginia.
Or Virginia, Duke, North Carolina, Duke. Or North Carolina, Virginia, Duke.
You decide. Tobacco Road rules.
But it won’t be a push-button decision this season. This is the season that Louisville can wedge its way to the top of the best college basketball conference in the nation.
Ask the guy who is wrapping up his fourth decade in the league — Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Speaking at the ACC’s Operation Basketball media day Tuesday, Coach K said that by the end of last season he believed there were five ACC teams capable of winning the national title. Virginia delivered — a first for the Cavaliers.
This season?
“The league is wide open,” Krzyzewski said. “It’s going to come down to two things — players staying healthy and how young players develop.”
Results from the pre-season media poll here will be released Thursday, but the consensus with observers that I talked to is that Duke, North Carolina or Louisville will be the pick to win the new 20-game regular season title.
"Louisville will be very good," North Carolina State coach Kevin Keatts said. "I like their group. Chris has done a good job in a short time."
The league favorite?
"I'm not willing to give anybody that nod yet," Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton said. "But Louisville has as much right to it as anybody with everybody they have back."
Virginia will earn a collection of votes because ballots that discount the work Tony Bennett can do with the Cavaliers risk becoming a freezing cold take.
Check the fine print.
Duke lost four starters, including three of the Top 10 picks in the 2019 NBA Draft. Coach K has another monstrous recruiting class. But Vernon Carey, Cassius Stanley, Wendell Moore, Matthew Hurt and Coach K’s grandson, Michael Savoring, are not Zion Williamson, Cam Reddish and R.J. Barrett.
North Carolina lost its top five scorers, leaving Roy Williams without a player who averaged more than 7.9 points per game last season. Williams has a sensational recruiting class coming — for 2020-21.
Virginia has never been confused with a One-and-Done Factory, but the national championship success inspired three of Bennett’s underclassmen — De’Andre Hunter, Ty Jerome and Kyle Guy — to pursue professional paychecks.
“We’ll have a target on our backs,” Bennett said.
Louisville lost two starters — Christen Cunningham and Khwan Fore — along with reserve V.J. King, a trio that averaged 17.3 points last season.
Solid players, sure. But they did not contribute to the ACC’s record-tying 10 first-round NBA Draft picks last June. They were not part of the league’s overall 13 draft selections.
It’s a season of transition for the ACC. For the first time in league history, not a single player will return who was voted to all-ACC first- or second-teams.
The headliners are a pair of third-teamers — Notre Dame forward John Mooney and Jordan Nwora of Louisville.
Look for Nwora to be the pre-season pick for the league’s player of the year — unless there are a flurry of votes for Duke point guard Tre Jones, who was not one of the players that Coach K brought to this gathering.
Nwora, Mack and Steven Enoch were scheduled to speak to the assembled media at 11:45 a.m. Tuesday. They’ll be asking about the raging expectations that have the Cards ranked in the Top 10 in every important pre-season forecast and the Top 5 in several.
Mack’s six-player recruiting class is not as acclaimed as Coach K’s. But it does not need to be.
With Nwora, Enoch, Dwayne Sutton, Malik Williams (currently out with a foot injury), Ryan McMahon and Darius Perry, joined by St. Joseph’s transfer Fresh Kimble, Mack will have the time to work guys like Samuell Williamson and Aidan Igiehon into the mix.
Especially in a season when the ACC does not appear to be as formidable as the league normally is.
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