Ranking the best teams in college basketball isn’t a difficult proposition this time of the year. Just start at the top with the 2 teams that played for the national championship last week in Houston and work your way down the NCAA Tournament bracket from there.

Ranking the coaches is much less of an exact science.

Do you judge them strictly by their records? By how far did their teams advance in March? Or do you put more stock into how they finished, compared to their team’s preseason expectations.

For the purpose of these ACC rankings, all of those factors were considered. And because there are new coaches and recent performance has been taken into greater account than career achievement, this way-too-early list looks significantly different from the one we compiled in November.

That might be cause for some disagreement. But isn’t that the point of these kinds of rankings?

So without any further ado, here they are.

Let the debate begin!

15. Kenny Payne, Louisville

About the only good thing that can be said about Payne’s debut at his alma mater is that things can only get better moving forward. The Cardinals suffered through the worst season in the 109-year history of their program by going 4-28 (2-18 ACC).

Adding to the misery is the fact that virtually the entire roster, including All-ACC guard El Ellis, has entered the transfer portal. The exodus gives Payne an opportunity to start over fresh, free from the cloud of an NCAA investigation that hung over the program during his 1st recruiting cycle.

Payne was a risky hire despite spending a decade as an assistant to John Calipari at Kentucky and the  2 seasons in the NBA with the New York Knicks under Tom Thibodeau. His performance this season didn’t do anything to instill confidence that he’s the right man to lead such an extensive rebuild.

His status as a member of Louisville’s 1986 national championship team should buy him at least some time to grow into the job. But he might not want to wait too long to start showing improvement.

14 Adrian Autry, Syracuse

Autry’s situation is not all that different from the one Jon Scheyer faced at Duke this season. He is a 1st-time head coach promoted to replace a Hall of Famer leading the program at which he was once a star player.

There are at least a few major differences, though.

At 51 years old, Autry has been around longer than the youthful Scheyer. After playing 4 seasons for the Orange from 1990-94 and a short overseas career, he served as an assistant at Virginia Tech before returning to his alma mater in 2011. 

And his transition to head coach has been much less scripted. While Scheyer had a full year to transition into the job while his mentor Mike Krzyzewski bowed out gracefully, Autry took over after his former coach Jim Boeheim was dragged out the door screaming and kicking  – at least figuratively – only a few hours following Syracuse’s ACC Tournament elimination.

Autry also takes over a program in desperate need of a reboot after falling into mediocracy in Boeheim’s final few seasons. While he still has a lot to prove in game situation, he’s already off to a good start with the addition of Notre Dame transfer JJ Starling and the return of Jesse Edwards, the ACC’s 2nd-leading rebounder.

13. Damon Stoudamire, Georgia Tech

Don’t let Stoudamire’s 71-77 overall record at Pacific from 2016-21 — with a winning percentage of .480 that’s almost identical to the .491 clip that his predecessor Josh Pastner posted at Tech — fool you. His first 3 seasons with the Tigers were spent building a program in the days before open transfers and NIL. 

He was 32-19 over his final 2 seasons and was a finalist for the job at his alma mater, Arizona, before leaving after the COVID-shortened 2020-21 campaign to join his longtime friend, Ime Udoka, with the Celtics.

Stoudamire’s NBA credentials, combined with a playing career that included a Final Four appearance with Arizona and a knowledge of the talent-rich Atlanta area recruiting scene – where both his sons played high school ball – the new Yellow Jackets coach has an opportunity to make an immediate impact with a Yellow Jackets program. 

12. Earl Grant, Boston College

Grant and his Eagles showed some improvement this season, improving by 3 wins both overall and in the ACC to finish at 16-17 and 8-11. Considering the state of the program upon his arrival from College of Charleston prior to last season, that’s an encouraging sign. 

The Eagles have posted only 1 winning season in the past 11 years. Even though they barely missed breaking through in 2022-23, they were able to post victories against 3 ranked opponents and record their most conference wins since 2010-11.

That progress, combined with an incoming recruiting class ranked among the top 30 in the nation, earned Grant a 2-year contract extension.

11. Hubert Davis, North Carolina

Davis got his tenure off to a flying start by guiding the Tar Heels to the national championship game in his 1st season as a head coach. But as it turns out, that memorable postseason run might just have been beginner’s luck.

The going was much tougher for him in Year 2. His 2022-23 Tar Heels, despite returning 4 starters, never came close to living up to what proved to be the unrealistic expectations of being ranked No. 1 in the nation to start the season. They fell out of the polls by Thanksgiving and were out of the NCAA Tournament in March, becoming the 1st preseason No. 1 to be left out of the bracket.

UNC clearly missed power forward Brady Manek, the 1 starter who wasn’t back and a forceful team leader. But Davis’ inexperience was also a contributing factor to the disappointing 7th place finish in the ACC. He wrestled with bench management and late game situations, issues that combined with a volatile chemistry in his locker room led to a 20-13 record that was good, just not good enough.

The book still is out on whether Davis actually is a worthy heir to the coaching legacy of Frank McGuire, Dean Smith and Roy Williams or simply caught lightning in a bottle last March. Next season will be a pivotal one for his future in Chapel Hill.

10. Micah Shrewsberry, Notre Dame

Shrewsberry became the Irish’s 18th coach on March 23 when he was hired to replace outcoming coach Mike Brey. An Indiana native who once coached at Indiana-South Bend for 2 seasons earlier in his career before joining Brad Stevens’ staff at Butler, he has strong local ties. 

Although he has only a limited amount of experience leading a program of his own, Shrewsberry has been associated with winning programs wherever he’s gone. He was part of back-to-back national runner-up teams at Butler before moving to Purdue then reuniting with Stevens to help the Boston Celtics to 5 straight NBA playoff appearances. 

At Penn State, he led the Nittany Lions to a 23-10 record, the Big Ten Tournament final and their 1st NCAA Tournament since 2011 in just his 2nd season on the job. He’s got his work cut out for him with the Irish, though. The Notre Dame roster he inherited currently has only 4 players on it – 3 returners and an incoming recruit. 

9. Mike Young, Virginia Tech

Young had the Hokies on top of the ACC after winning the conference tournament for the 1st time in school history and getting to the NCAA Tournament last March. He carried the momentum carried over to this season by getting off to an 11-1 start that included a blowout of UNC in their ACC opener.

But things went downhill quickly after star guard Hunter Cattoor suffered a fractured elbow in an overtime loss at Boston College on Dec. 21. Cattoor, the 2022 ACC Tournament MVP, missed a month and Tech’s offense suffered in his absence. The Hokies lost 7 straight, all to conference opponents.

To Young’s credit, the season didn’t completely spin off the rails. He held things together, regrouped his team and salvaged the season with a strong finish – including a win at the ACC Tournament and a bid to the NIT.

8. Leonard Hamilton, Florida State

The Seminoles’ 9-23 record this season was the exception, not the rule during Hamilton’s tenure at FSU. It was his 1st losing season since 2005 and only the 2nd in 20-year tenure in Tallahassee.

Despite the recent struggle, Hamilton is the winningest coach in Seminoles’ history and his 193 conference victories are the 5th-most among ACC coaches. He has 626 college wins in all to go along with a brief fling in the NBA with the Washington Wizards. 

Hamilton is the only person to win multiple coach of the year awards in both the ACC and Big East. He also has 3 national coach of the year honors to his credit, along with ACC titles at the 2012 tournament and for the 2019-20 regular season and at the age of 74, as already announced his intention to return next season.

7. Steve Forbes, Wake Forest

The Transfer Portal Whisperer hit another home run with the addition of Tyree Appleby, who became the 1st player to lead the ACC in both scoring and assists. But because exactly half of the Deacons’ 14 losses came in games decided by a single basket, they missed out on the NCAA Tournament for the 2nd straight year.

That, however, shouldn’t detract from the job Forbes has done with the program. Wake had enjoyed only 2 winning seasons in the decade prior to his arrival from East Tennessee State in 2020. They earned 25 victories last season, the most ever by an ACC team that failed to get into the NCAA Tournament, and followed that up with 19 this year.

That success is right on brand for Forbes,, whose ETSU teams won 24 or more games in each of his 5 seasons there before joining the Deacons.

6. Brad Brownell, Clemson

Brownell has shown an innate knack over his 13 seasons with the Tigers for pulling a rabbit out of his hat just when it appears he might be on the verge of being replaced. In 2020, he notched an upset of UNC that ended Clemson’s lifetime, 59-game losing streak in Chapel Hill. In 2021 it was a late-season 5-game winning streak that resulted in the 3rd NCAA Tournament bid of his tenure.

He did it again this year.

Once again in danger after going only 1 game over ,500 in 2022, Brownell did 1 of his best coaching jobs this season by taking a team picked to finish 11th in the ACC and taking them to a 23-11 record (14-6 ACC) and a top-4 seed in the conference tournament.

The Tigers got off to a rough start while star big man PJ Hall worked his way back into shape following offseason surgery, suffering some losses that ultimately came back to haunt them. But with 1st-team All-ACC forward Hunter Tyson leading the way, they improved quickly once the conference schedule began – winning their first 7 ACC games on the way to a 14-6 record and 23 wins overall.

Unfortunately, the job Brownell did with this team was tarnished somewhat by an NCAA selection committee that, like Wake Forest the previous season, fed into the “ACC is a subpar conference” narrative and denied Clemson a spot in the Tournament field.

5. Kevin Keatts, NC State

Even though Keatts posted winning records in 4 of his first 5 seasons with the Wolfpack, he found himself in a win-or-else situation after suffering through an injury-plagued 2021-22 season that ended with a program-record 21 losses.

He got a huge break when star shooting guard Terquavion Smith chose to return for his sophomore season rather than remain in the NBA Draft, where he was projected as a 1st-round pick. He further set himself up for success with a strong effort with the transfer portal that included the addition of All-ACC point guard Jarkel Joiner and charismatic big man DJ Burns.

But he also learned from the experience of the previous season by doing a better job of holding things together when adversity hit. Instead of falling apart when starting big man Dusan Mahorcic and leading rebounder Jack Clark went down with injuries before the start of the new year, Keatts’ team catapulted itself into the national rankings.

The Wolfpack went on to win 23 games, more than doubling its win total from 2021-22.

4. Jeff Capel, Pittsburgh

Capel started the year on the hot seat after posting losing records in each of his first 4 seasons with the Panthers. But athletic director Heather Lykes stuck with him, in large part because his buyout would have shrunk from $15 million had he been fired in 2022 to just $5 million after this season.

And he made the most of what was surely his last chance to prove himself.

The former Coach K protege saved Pitt $10 million and rewarded his boss’ faith by producing one of the nation’s most impressive turnarounds. Thanks to the effective use of the NCAA’s transfer portal, Capel put together a team that went 14-5 in the ACC and won 24 games overall – including 2 in the NCAA Tournament – on his way to winning conference Coach of the Year honors.

It’s a success made all the more impressive considering that Pitt’s top incoming freshman Dior Johnson sat out the entire season after encountering a legal problem. and its best returning player John Hugley appeared in only 8 games because of injury and personal issues.

3. Jon Scheyer, Duke

We predicted in our preseason coaches power rankings that it wouldn’t take long for Scheyer to catapult toward the top of this list. And here he is, jumping from No. 14 in October all the way up to No. 3 after a rookie season that was anything but easy.

There were plenty of questions about Scheyer’s preparedness for the job when he was named to succeed  Krzyzewski in June 2021. And it was a calculated risk putting such an elite program in the hands of a 35-year-old 1st-time head coach. Even 1 groomed by the winningest coach the college game has ever seen.

But Scheyer never seemed intimidated by the challenge he accepted, even when things didn’t go according to plan right away. His confidence, both in himself and his players, set a tone that helped carry the Blue Devils through an early rash of injuries and some growing pains on the road to peak at just the right time. 

He won 27 games, 10 more than Krzyzewski did in his 1st season at Duke, along with the program’s ACC-record 22nd conference tournament title. He is the 1st tournament MVP to also cut down the nets as a coach and only the 3rd coach in league history to bring home the championship trophy in his 1st year at his school.

In doing so, he has set himself up to defy the odds and succeed where others who have tried to follow a legend have failed. 

2. Tony Bennett, Virginia

Let’s not get too carried away by that ugly last-minute meltdown against Furman or by the fact that the opening round NCAA Tournament loss to a double-digit seed was the Cavaliers’ 3rd since 2018.

It was bad, alright, especially since Bennett admitted after the fact that he should have called timeout when point guard Kihei Clark was trapped along the baseline and in panic mode. But neither that nor those other Tournament stumbles – which have led to questions about the compatibility of Bennett’s defensive style to the postseason – shouldn’t detract from the regular season success UVA has achieved over the past decade.

The Cavaliers have either won or tied for the ACC’s regular season championship 6 times in the past 10 seasons, including this season. That ties Bennett with Krzyzewski, Dean Smith and Roy Williams to accomplish that feat.

And oh yeah, there’s that national title Bennett won in 2019.

At 53 years old, Bennett still is a young head coach. With 340 wins with the Cavaliers, he is already the winningest coach in program history and with a .733 career winning percentage at UVA and Washington State, he’s well on his way to joining those ACC coach legends in the Hall of Fame. 

1. Jim Larrañaga, Miami

Overlooked and underappreciated for most of his career at Miami, Larrañaga has finally begun getting the recognition he’s richly deserved. It started months before he led his Hurricanes to the 1st Final Four appearance in school history.

Back in December, the still-young 73-year-old became a 1st-time nominee for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, While he didn’t get in on this time around, he strengthened his candidacy moving forward by adding another ACC regular season championship to his resume before getting to the Final 4 for the 2nd time in his career – 17 years after he got there with George Mason in 2006.

This year’s 29 wins tied the school record set by his 2012-13 team set in his 2nd season with the Hurricanes. His 255 victories in his 12 years in Coral Gables are the most in school history, as are his back-to-back Elite 8 appearances. As much as his upbeat personality and coaching ability, Larrañaga’s ability to adjust to and embrace new concepts such as the transfer portal and name, image and likeness considerations have had a major impact on his ability to stay ahead of the competition.