ACC Basketball: Ranking all 15 head coaches in 2023 after recent changes

1. Tony Bennett – Virginia

Bennett starred at Green Bay three decades ago under his father Dick, who later became head coach at Wisconsin. Bennett would begin his coaching career on his father’s staff and later serve under him again at Washington State a few years later. After his father stepped down, Bennett began his own head coaching career with those Cougars in 2006, leading them to the Sweet Sixteen and their most recent trip to the Big Dance two years later. He accepted the Virginia job in 2009 and certainly stands as the conference’s best coach in the current climate.

After taking over a Cavaliers program that was vastly mediocre, he’s turned them into a powerhouse on the national level. Though Virginia has been upset a few times recently in the NCAA Tournament, this team has won six of the last ten ACC regular season titles, including this past season. Of course, Bennett also led the Cavaliers to the national championship in 2019 and has won a boatload of games in his first fourteen seasons in Charlottesville.

Bennett gets results and the Cavaliers win games, with their tenacious defense and everything else they’ve done over the last decade plus. You just can’t compare the current resumes or conference standings to what Bennett has accomplished, inheriting a program that could barely dream of this kind of success in the early 2000’s. With the recent retirements in this league, he’s even more the standard in the ACC.

We’ve taken some time to run through and rank the head coaches of the ACC, but do you agree with the order we’ve put them in today? There’s still plenty ahead for each of these programs and coaches, especially with recruiting and the Transfer Portal really taking off in the weeks to come. Who will stand out in 2024?