UNC’s Longest ACC Tournament Drought, Other Notes On League’s Signature Event
By David Glenn
UNC’s relationship with the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament is a long, impressive and fairly consistent one.
Since the league’s creation in 1953, the Tar Heels have the second-most ACC championships (18) in men’s basketball, and they’re the only league member that has never competed in the ACC Tournament for any 10-year period without capturing at least one title.
Perhaps until now.
Carolina most recently claimed the ACC Tournament (which determines the official champion) in 2016, under coach Roy Williams. That league title ended a seven-year drought for the Tar Heels. When Williams won his other two ACC crowns, back-to-back in 2007 and 2008, he ended an eight-year drought.
Now it’s up to fifth-year coach Hubert Davis and the 2026 Tar Heels to make sure the program doesn’t fall short of the ACC title for the 10th year in a row. That has never happened; the Heels’ longest previous all-time drought in this category was nine seasons, long ago, between their conference crowns in 1957 (under coach Frank McGuire) and 1967 (under coach Dean Smith).
Although UNC’s status as the #4 seed in this week’s ACC Tournament suggests that the Tar Heels are among the event’s favorites — nearly 90 percent of all ACC Tournaments have been won by top-four seeds — their hopes took a big hit with the recent season-ending injury to star freshman forward Caleb Wilson.
“It was a dream for (Wilson) to play in the ACC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament,” Davis said. “My heart is broken that he won’t be able to do that, but we’ve finished the regular season, and now it’s time to regroup and move toward the ACC Tournament.”
(photo via Todd Melet)
The Triangle Trifecta
Although they now comprise only 16.7 percent of the ACC’s membership, Triangle neighbors Duke, UNC and NC State — all founding members of the conference, of course, dating to the 1953-54 season — are responsible for nearly three-quarters of all ACC men’s basketball championships.
ACC Championships (1954-2025)
23 — Duke 19 — (all other schools combined) 18 — North Carolina 11 — NC State
Triangle Schools’ Total=52 of 71 (73.2%)
The North Carolina-centric theme continues with Wake Forest, which is tied with Georgia Tech for the fourth-most ACC titles (four each). Next are Maryland and Virginia (three each), then Florida State (2012), Miami (2013), Notre Dame (2015), South Carolina (1971) and Virginia Tech (2022), which have captured one apiece. The Terrapins and Gamecocks were league members from 1953-2014 and 1953-71, respectively.
Boston College, Cal, Clemson (an original ACC member), Louisville, Pittsburgh, SMU, Stanford and Syracuse have never won the ACC Tournament.
Mount Rushmore Coaches
Only four long-time head coaches have managed to win more than one-third of their trips to the ACC Tournament: Duke’s Vic Bubas (40 percent; four of 10 trips from 1960-69), Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski (38 percent; 15 of 39 trips from 1981-2021), UNC’s Dean Smith (36 percent; 13 of 36 trips from 1962-97) and NC State’s Everett Case (36 percent; four of 11 trips from 1954-64).
Those four men also represent the Mount Rushmore of ACC Tournament champions: Krzyzewski (15), Smith (13), Bubas (4) and Case (4). Next on the list are Georgia Tech’s Bobby Cremins, NC State’s Norm Sloan and UNC’s Roy Williams, with three titles each.
Among shorter-term head coaches, Duke’s Bill Foster (two of six from 1975-80) and UNC’s Bill Guthridge (one of three from 1998-2000) won exactly one-third of their head coaching trips to the ACC Tournament. Guthridge, of course, also was a part of 13 additional conference championships, as Smith’s long-time assistant.
Meanwhile, fourth-year Duke coach Jon Scheyer already is in the process of etching his name in the history books.
Still just 38 years old, Scheyer led the Blue Devils to ACC Tournament crowns in 2023 and 2025, he recently claimed his second regular-season title, and his program is the #1 seed this week in Charlotte. Earlier this season, Scheyer (118-24 career record) became the fastest ACC coach to reach 100 career victories, hitting the mark in just 122 games.
Welcome (Back) To North Carolina
The modern expansion of the ACC perfectly corresponded with the dramatic acceleration of an in-state/out-of-state rotation of the ACC Tournament, although this week’s event marks the second of five straight in the Old North State.
Prior to 2004, the ACC always was a seven-, eight- or nine-member league, with four of those universities — along with the league’s headquarters, then in Greensboro — based in North Carolina. Starting in 2004-05, the conference grew to have 11 members, then 12 in 2005-06, then 15 in 2013-14, then the current 18 in 2024-25. The number of North Carolina schools, of course, remained at four.
From 1954-2004, 44 of the 51 ACC Tournaments (86 percent) were held in North Carolina. The first 13 events were contested at Reynolds Coliseum, NC State’s home court at the time, before the league switched to independent sites. Greensboro (the host a record 30 times) and Charlotte (second-most, with 15) then dominated the rotation for decades.
From 2005-24, “only” 10 of the 19 ACC Tournaments (53 percent) were held in North Carolina, with the other nine in Brooklyn (three), D.C. (three), Atlanta (two) and Tampa (one). The 2023 event in Greensboro was a make-up of sorts for the cancelled-midstream-by-COVID attempt in 2020.
Now the conference is in the midst of a five-year run back in its birth state, rotating between the Spectrum Center in Charlotte (2025, 2026, 2028) and the First Horizon Coliseum in Greensboro (2027, 2029).
With the ACC’s headquarters now in Charlotte, it will be interesting to see whether the Queen City becomes an even more frequent home for the ACC Tournament, as it is for the league’s annual football championship game, and whether Greensboro remains a regular part of the rotation beyond 2029.
David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.
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