College basketball preseason Top 25: Kansas, Marquette, Duke lead 2023-24 rankings

The Blue Devils are a clear top-five preseason team largely due to the talent they retained. Neither Kyle Filipowski nor Tyrese Proctor declared for the draft despite being potential first-round picks in 2023. Do-it-all forward Mark Mitchell is also back, pairing with that duo to form the best sophomore class in college basketball this season. Don’t forget senior guard Jeremy Roach returning, either. This isn’t the one-and-done factory at Duke we’ve seen in recent years.

Filipowski will be a preseason All-American after being one of the most productive freshmen in college basketball last season with his skill level as a 7-footer. Proctor struggled with inefficiency early in his freshman season, but by the time March rolled around, he had taken a step and become one of the best two-way guards in the country, averaging 11 points and four assists with an excellent assist rate and stifling point-of-attack defense. And don’t sleep on Mitchell, whose defensive consistency and aggressive driving were valuable as the team’s fifth starter last season.

The Blue Devils also bring in another loaded recruiting class with four five-star players. The one scouts are currently most excited about is Jared McCain, a highly-skilled 6-foot-3 guard with terrific shooting ability who excels playing on-balance. T.J. Power seems to be the forgotten man in the Duke recruiting class, but he’s a bit older (he turns 20 in a month) and has a polish that should allow him to contribute earlier than some of the others in the class.

Following arguably the most disappointing season in college basketball last season, the Tar Heels hit the transfer portal hard and entirely re-tooled their roster around pivot points R.J. Davis in the backcourt and Armando Bacot at the five. They got Stanford point forward Harrison Ingram, a grab-and-go 6-foot-8 wing/forward who will run the floor and get a chance to create offense. They added Cormac Ryan, the kind of unselfish, team-first shooter the team desperately lacked last season. Then they also brought in solid depth pieces in Jae’Lyn Withers, Paxson Wojcik, and James Okonkwo.

How quickly will all of this gel together? That’s the big question. Ingram is probably best suited as a four, but he might be asked to play a bit more at the three. Withers, Okonkwo, and rising sophomore Jalen Washington all are probably best suited as college fives, but Bacot is there and might shift a couple of them up the lineup to the four. The player who could make all of this come together is Elliot Cadeu, the point guard who reclassified over the summer. Cadeau is one of the best passers and playmakers to come out of high school basketball in the last decade, a sharp decision-maker who just consistently finds his teammates in the right spots. But Davis is already in Chapel Hill, and playing both together could lead to shooting questions as well as backcourt size questions on defense. Will Hubert Davis throw the young point guard out there and trust him? Can Cadeau earn that right from day one?

This is a huge season that will tell us a lot about Huber Davis and his future in Chapel Hill. It’s an excellent opportunity for him to prove himself as the right guy for the job. He needs to make all of these talented pieces fit together, and needs to find the answers to all of these potential logjam questions.

The Hurricanes are coming off of a Final Four appearance last year as a No. 5 seed and return an intriguing roster. They lost multiple second round NBA Draft picks in Jordan Miller and ACC Player of the Year Isaiah Wong but retained starters Nijel Pack, Wooga Poplar and Norchad Omier. Poplar is the player to watch here, as he looked like the team’s best player during its overseas trip to France. Playing more of a 3-and-D role last year, Poplar has real intrigue among NBA scouts due to his explosiveness, shooting ability and defense. If he adds the scoring punch off the bounce that he looked capable of in France, he might be the next breakout player in the ACC.

Beyond them, the big addition here is Matthew Cleveland, a transfer from Florida State who has long been seen as a potential NBA player but has been a bit streaky throughout his career. He struggled early last year, then really turned it on. From mid-December until the end of January last year, he averaged 16 points and 10 rebounds per game. But he suffered a back injury in February, and his production fell off toward the end of the year again, as he averaged just 12 points and six rebounds while shooting under 40 percent. Cleveland can bring the slashing and scoring that the team lost with Miller if he stays healthy.

Ultimately, the reason we’re probably a bit lower than consensus on Miami, though, is the team’s depth. The top four seems set to rival any in the ACC with Pack, Poplar, Cleveland and Omier. But who will step up beyond them? AJ Casey looked ready to do so in France, but Miami will need at least two others beyond him to truly emerge. This was a team last year that got hot at the right time and still has a ton of firepower. But the Hurricanes need to prove they can replace two of the best players in the ACC.

We’re probably going to be a bit higher on Virginia than most entering the year, but the pitch is pretty easy. Over the last three years, Virginia got away from what made it a premier program. The Cavaliers finished 36th, 59th, and 25th in adjusted defensive rating in each of the last three seasons — numbers that would be solid for most high-major programs, but egregious for this one under Tony Bennett. From 2014 to 2020, Virginia never finished worse than seventh nationally in those seven seasons. It says something that a bad three-year run for Virginia at this point still results in two top-four NCAA Tournament seeds and two shared regular-season ACC titles (in 2021 and 2023). Yeah, the standards are just ridiculously high in Charlottesville at this point.

Over those three seasons, Virginia generally played a bit smaller in the backcourt and without as much athleticism across the wings and the frontcourt. This season though, that will change. With ACC Defensive Player of the Year Reece Beekman spearheading the point-of-attack defense, Virginia has an ideal roster to run Bennett’s pack-line defense. Merrimack transfer Jordan Minor won the NEC Defensive Player of the Year as a mobile big who can really rotate around the interior within a scheme that requires a lot of active post doubles on the block and showing-and-recovering in ball screens. And potential breakout sophomore Ryan Dunn is a long, active, athletic wing at 6-foot-8 who can cover a ton of ground. He is next in the long line of Virginia wings to morph into NBA prospects, following in the footsteps of Trey Murphy and De’Andre Hunter.

The team also brought in one of our favorite transfers in the country in Andrew Rohde, a 6-foot-5 scoring guard who can slash to the rim and knock down shots from distance. He’s also not a sieve on defense and knows where he needs to be. It’s not like Virginia left, necessarily. But this is a team that is much more well-suited to success with Virginia’s scheme and for a deeper run.