While Duke and North Carolina are clearly the top two teams in the ACC, the rest of the league is in a race for 3rd place. There are now three teams tied for 2nd in the league, each sitting at 5-2 in league play. Which of these teams will separate themselves as true ACC contenders, and which will be knocked out of the picture?
ACC Contender or Pretender
A great year of ACC basketball continued on Saturday night. With almost every team in action, there is a lot to talk about. The biggest storyline, however, is the 3-way tie for 2nd in the ACC. North Carolina State, Florida State, and Wake Forest are all 5-2 in conference play, sitting just behind Duke (4-2) and North Carolina (7-0). Despite Duke’s shocking home loss to Pittsburgh, they and UNC will most likely compete to the end. Other teams that were expected to compete like Miami (FL) and Clemson have fallen out of the race early. This leaves the question, which of these teams, if any, can keep pace and contend for a regular season ACC Title? Let’s take a look and see which of these teams are ACC contenders and which are pretenders.
Florida St.
From 2017-2021, Florida State was one of the premier teams in the ACC. They made the NCAA tournament yearly and even won the ACC regular season in 2020. However, the last two seasons have been very disappointing. In the 21-22 season they went 17-14 and followed that up with a 9-23 record in the 22-23 season. After starting 6-6 this season, with losses against teams like South Florida and Lipscomb, it looked like this season was due to be another huge disappointment for the Seminoles.
However, since then they have gone 5-1, with their lone loss coming last night against Clemson. Their other ACC loss came against North Carolina during the 6-6 stretch to start the year. So, have they turned their season around, or will they return to mediocrity? While they most likely won’t be as bad as they were to start the year, all signs point to the ladder rather than the former.
To be an ACC contender, you need a true superstar player to compete with teams like Duke and North Carolina. Florida St. just doesn’t have this. Jamir Watkins is a great player, leading the team in points, assists, rebounds, and steals. Sounds like a superstar, right? The problem is they still don’t stack up with the rest of the ACC. While he leads his team in these categories, he only breaks the top 10 in steals when you look conference-wide. He is 28th in points, 17th in rebounds, and 18th in assists.
While Florida St. has impressed to start ACC play, it is clear they need something else to truly be an ACC contender, and their NET ranking of 88 shows it. Leonard Hamilton has this team close, but they need another year to reach those highs of the 2019-2020 season
Ruling: ACC Pretender
Wake Forest
Unlike Florida State, Wake Forest is coming off its best two seasons in a while. After making the tournament in 2017, they had 4 straight losing seasons until the 21-22 season where they went 25-10. They followed that up with a 19-14 season last year, but they are still missing one big thing, a NCAA tournament appearance.
They are also similar to Florida St. though, as they started the season 2-3. However, their losses are not nearly as bad. They lost to other Power 5 schools like Utah and Georgia, who are both playing well this year. They also don’t have a single loss outside of quads 1 and 2. But there is also one thing possibly holding the Demon Deacons back from being an ACC contender. While they have only lost two games since the 2-3 stretch, they are to the other two teams we are considering.
They have lost to both Florida St. and NC State in the past 2 weeks, making them appear as obvious pretenders. However, they have something Florida St. does not. They have multiple scoring options, with 4 players averaging over 14 points this season. Kevin Miller and Hunter Sallis have been standouts averaging 17.8 and 17.6 respectively.
Due to this, labeling them pretenders at this point would be too brash. They get UNC on Monday, look for an upset here. UNC has let both Louisville and Boston College stick around in the last week. If Wake Forest can win, or keep it a close loss, they can prove themselves as contenders. But if they lose by double digits, it will be clear they can’t compete with the top of the ACC and must be pretenders.
Ruling: ACC Contender (Barring big loss @UNC)
NC State
Unlike the other two teams, NC State started great this season. They started 4-0, before losing 2-in-a-row to Ole Miss and BYU. They now are 13-5, but all of their losses were to current AP Top 25 teams before losing Saturday to Virginia Tech. However, they also don’t have a single win against teams that have been ranked this season, except for Virginia, who had a very brief stint.
This makes the Wolfpack hard to read, but they also have star-caliber players. DJ Horne and DJ Burns Jr. can both become unstoppable at different points and complement each other greatly. Horne can shoot the lights out, while Burns dominates the paint. A duo like this makes the Wolfpack hard to label as pretenders.
However, they lost their only chance to get a marquee win until March, when they next play UNC and Duke. This leaves them with very little margin for error and will need to be just about perfect in late-January through February to not lose contender status. But if they can do this, and knock off UNC and/or Duke in March, they can easily win the ACC regular season title.
