The ACC released the 2024-25 men’s basketball preseason poll on Tuesday, and the Duke Blue Devils look like the favorites to win the conference.
Head coach Jon Scheyer and his team received 42 of the 54 possible first-place votes, ending up with a conference-leading 956 points in the voting.
While Scheyer has made the Elite Eight, won 54 games, and taken home an ACC Tournament title over his first two seasons as the Duke head coach, he’s yet to win the conference’s regular-season title. After a 29-11 ACC record to start his tenure, the voters seem to think he’ll add that bullet point to his resume next spring.
The North Carolina Tar Heels, last season’s regular-season conference champion, received 11 of the other 12 votes to finish second with 924 points. No other team finished with more than 800 (Wake Forest).
[autotag]Cooper Flagg[/autotag], the top-ranked freshman and presumed No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA draft, plays a huge role in why the Blue Devils start the year as ACC favorites. He dominated the voting for ACC Rookie of the Year, earning all but one vote for the award, and made the All-ACC First Team with the second-most votes in the conference.
Flagg’s not the only reason why the Blue Devils look like national championship contenders, however. Classmates [autotag]Kon Knueppel[/autotag] and [autotag]Khaman Maluach[/autotag] both made ESPN’s top 10 NBA draft prospects, returning starters Tyrese Proctor and Caleb Foster bring a combined 73 starts to the lineup, and the three transfers look like instant-impact players.
Duke starts its 2024-25 season on November 4 with a home game against Maine, and the Blue Devils play their first conference game against Louisville on December 8.