College basketball is back!

Will this be the year of the Tar Heel? What will Jon Scheyer’s 1st team at Duke look like? Can Tony Bennett get the ACC back on track? The ACC is packed with storylines for the 2022-23 season, and they all begin to play out this week.

To get you ready for the season, we’ve prepared a fresh — and first — batch of ACC Basketball Power Rankings for Week 1. Let’s dive in!

15. Georgia Tech 

It’s just tough to see how a team that loses its top 2 scorers from a team that went 12-20 a season ago gets any better. The real question in Atlanta is how long can Josh Pastner last if things don’t improve this season?

14. Louisville

Kenny Payne’s 1st Louisville team will play really hard for him. That’s as much as Saturday Road is willing to guarantee. With a host of new faces and only 10 scholarship players, this season is about laying a strong cultural foundation for the banner years Payne hopes will follow.

13. Clemson

Brad Brownell is in Year 13 at Clemson, which is a long time to coach somewhere where you haven’t won a conference championship or ACC tournament. Will he last to Year 14? Most of that depends on the status of PJ Hall, who if healthy is among the league’s best players but for now is out indefinitely as he recovers from offseason knee surgery. The Tigers return only 1 other starter outside of Hall, and there are too many new faces here to think Brownell improves on last season’s 17-16 mediocrity without his talented big man.

12. Syracuse

Jim Boeheim can talk all he wants about how this team is more athletic and more suited to play his 2-3 zone defense, but basically anything would be an upgrade from last season’s team, which ranked 207th in Adjusted KenPom Defensive Efficiency on the way to the 1st losing season in the Boeheim era. Even if the ‘Cuse improves on defense, who scores? Joseph Girard III is a terrific player, but with the Boeheim brothers gone, this isn’t a very talented offensive roster. Another losing season seems in store for the 77-year old Boeheim. Will that be enough for him to call it quits?

11. Wake Forest

The Demon Deacons are in the unenviable position of replacing ACC Player of the Year Alondes Williams and a first-round NBA draft pick in Jake LaRavia. That was the core of last season’s 25-win team, and while Tyree Appleby gives the team an electric playmaker at point guard, there’s not enough in the frontcourt to give the Demon Deacons the balance they need to replicate the bubble team that reached the NIT quarterfinals.

10. Pitt

Jeff Capel has a tremendous big man in John Hugley, and Nelly Cummings and Dior Johnson (if he returns from suspension for an assault charge) will help stabilize a subpar offense around him. The Panthers were a much better team late in 2021-22, and that improvement will carry over into 2022-23, but will it be enough to save Capel’s job?

9. Boston College

Earl Grant was among the best hires in the Power 6 during the 2021-22 offseason and his 1st season at Boston College saw the Eagles play competitive basketball despite a host of limitations offensively. The thing is, Grant’s College of Charleston teams always could score, and now Grant is blending a pair of 4-star freshmen with the Langford brothers and an outstanding scoring guard in Jaeden Zackery. This is the sleeper team in the ACC.

8. NC State

Terquavion Smith is an elite scorer, but the ceiling on this team will depend on how well Winthrop transfer DJ Burns, who is a load with great hands and a good offensive set of post moves, adjusts to life in the ACC. The Wolfpack also needs Ole Miss transfer Jarkel Joiner, who has eye-opening athleticism but failed to reach the NCAA Tournament once while in Oxford, to provide Smith on-ball relief. Get those things, and the Pack might be cooking. But if this is just an NIT team, is Kevin Keatts doomed?

7. Florida State

The Seminoles would be higher but for the devastating injury to Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year Jaylan Gainey, who was going to be Leonard Hamilton’s main man in the middle. The loss of star freshman Baba Miller for 16 games also limits this team’s upside, but there’s plenty of talent for Hamilton to return FSU to the NCAA Tournament.

6. Notre Dame

The Fighting Irish might have 1 of the best starting 5’s in the ACC, depending on how quickly freshman JJ Starling adjusts to college basketball. It’s the reserves who limit this team’s upside, and if Mike Brey can only trust 6 guys — which is very possible absent quality minutes from the “other” highly touted freshman, Ven-Allen-Lubin –– the Fighting Irish might not finish among the top six despite being elite offensively. Still, last season felt like a turnaround campaign for Brey, and Saturday Road will give the Fighting Irish the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

5. Virginia Tech

Mike Young has an All-American candidate in do-everything Justyn Mutts, who Young says is the best defensive player he has coached. He has 3 dynamic shooters on the perimeter, led by Darius Maddux, who shot an absurd 51% from deep last season. And he thinks he has a deeper team than in seasons past, despite the departure of All-ACC post presence Keve Aluma. Young is a brilliant offensive mind and it feels like a breakthrough is possible in Blacksburg after 2 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances and tough 1st-round exits. We’ll see how good the frontcourt is first, but there is plenty to like about the Hokies.

4. Virginia

An experienced Tony Bennett team with a chip on its shoulder? Remind me what happened the last time that was the preseason storyline in Charlottesville? This is a legitimate ACC championship contender if (1) Armaan Franklin regains his shooting stroke after a rough 2021-22 and (2) the Hoos are back in the top 25 in KenPom defense after finishing 59th a season ago, the program’s worst mark under Bennett since 2011. Both of those things seem possible, and Ohio University transfer Ben Vander Plas will be a bona fide gamebreaker for the Hoos as a reserve — he can shoot, rebound and pass and gives Bennett a stretch 4 floor spacer for his blocker-mover offensive system.

3. Duke

The Blue Devils have more talent than anyone in the conference, but with Jeremy Roach the lone upperclassman starting and a brutal November schedule, there will be growing pains for this team. Under Mike Krzyzewski, you knew Duke would weather that storm and maximize the talent come March. Jon Scheyer’s ambitious challenge is following in his mentor’s footsteps.

2. Miami

The Hurricanes pushed eventual national champion Kansas in the Elite Eight before their limited frontcourt finally caught up to them. That’s why Jim Larrañaga hit the portal so hard and brought in Norchad Omier, the Sun Belt Player of the Year who gives the Canes the force they need in the middle. Miami’s guard play, led by All-American candidate Isaiah Wong and former Kansas State scorer Nijel Pack, has the chance to be just as good as last season’s Wong-Charlie Moore-Kam McGusty triumvirate. If it is, don’t be stunned if Miami fights to win this league.

1. North Carolina

The Tar Heels aren’t perfect. They lost 10 games last season, after all. But the thing about the Fatigueless Four of Armando Bacot, Caleb Love, RJ Davis and Leaky Black is they are on a mission. Having come so close to hanging national championship banner No. 7 from the Dean Dome rafters a season ago, the quartet, now joined by Northwestern transfer Pete Nance in the role of mountain man Brady Manek, are prohibitive national championship favorites, and for good reason. They have great guard plays, a dynamic, playmaking point guard in Love, a shutdown defender on the perimeter in Black, and a Wooden Award candidate monster in the middle in Bacot. This is the best team in the country and will be even if the Tar Heels drop a game or 2 during November and December while coach Hubert Davis figures out just how deep he wants his rotation to be without disrupting the chemistry of the group that nearly won the national title last April.