College basketball analysts and pundits aren’t quite sure where to put Virginia in the pecking order of the ACC this season. On one hand, Tony Bennett’s track record of regular season success is undeniable – just twice in the last 11 years have his Cavaliers finished outside the top three in the ACC and never worse than sixth. But on the other hand, this year’s roster is certainly lacking in “known commodities” following the departure of Reece Beekman and other impact players and the influx of relatively unproven transfers.
As these various media outlets release their previews for the upcoming 2024-2025 college basketball season, we’re keeping an eye on them to see where the “experts” are predicting the Cavaliers to rank among the new 18-member Atlantic Coast Conference.
This week, Sports Illustrated’s Kevin Sweeney, a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association and a voter for the Naismith Trophy, unveiled his preview for the ACC, which included a preseason ranking for all 18 teams. In that preview, Sweeney has Virginia projected to finish sixth in the ACC.
Here are Sweeney’s full preseason rankings for the ACC:
While it is not surprising to see the likes of Duke and North Carolina ahead of the Cavaliers, as they usually are in preseason rankings, also sitting in front of UVA in the rankings are, in order, Louisville, Wake Forest, and Clemson.
Sweeney must think Pat Kelsey will work a miracle in his first year at Louisville, Wake Forest will finally break its streak of six-consecutive seasons without an NCAA Tournament appearance, and Clemson will easily replace the production of the departed PJ Hall and Joseph Girard, who were so key in the Tigers’ breakthrough run to the Elite Eight last season.
It’s not far-fetched to imagine a few of these five teams finishing ahead of Virginia, but no one in the last decade-plus has been as good at racking up regular season ACC wins than Tony Bennett and until we see a drastic decline on that front, we’re going to be hesitant to project the Cavaliers falling that far from the top.
Here’s what Sweeney wrote on Sports Illustrated about Virginia:
“Virginia hasn’t won an NCAA tournament game since the 2019 national championship game, its 42-point embarrassment against Colorado State this year the latest in the program’s March woes. That game highlighted what has been bubbling for a few years: The Cavaliers’ offense desperately needs modernization. There’s your traditional preseason talk about playing faster, though we’ll see if that’s coach speak or an actual shift in philosophy from Tony Bennett. Upgrading the talent level was also important in improving the offense, and it does appear that UVA has done that with the likes of Duke transfer TJ Power and Kansas State transfer Dai Dai Ames.”
With no mention of Elijah Saunders or Jalen Warley or the return of Isaac McKneely and Blake Buchanan, it’s safe to say that, at least to a certain extent, Sweeney is sleeping on Virginia this season. This isn’t a knock on Sweeney, who generally does a good job and certainly does his homework. And there are other preseason rankings that have UVA lower, including a Tweet (which has since been deleted) from one college basketball betting account that predicted the Cavaliers would finish 11th in the ACC. But history has shown us that it’s never a good idea to doubt Tony Bennett when it comes to regular season success in the ACC.
For what it’s worth, we had Virginia projected to finish third in our ACC predictions we published earlier this month. There’s simply too much talent on the rosters of Duke and North Carolina for us to reasonably have the Hoos above them… yet. We’ll see soon where the official ACC Preseason Media Poll has Virginia finishing this season. For now, we’ll just leave you with this gem from everyone’s favorite UVA sports stats guy Danny Neckel:
Number of times predicted to be #1 in the ACC men’s basketball preseason poll since 2014:
Duke: 8
UNC: 2
Virginia: 1Number of times finishing #1 in the ACC men’s basketball standings since 2014:
Virginia: 6
UNC: 4
Duke: 1— Danny Neckel (@DNeckel19) October 11, 2024
Video/Transcript: Tony Bennett, UVA Basketball Players at ACC Tipoff
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