All ACC teams won't compete at 2025 conference basketball tournaments

By Brian Murphy, WRAL

Three ACC men's and women's basketball teams will not participate in the conference tournament next season.

The league announced Wednesday that the top 15 teams will participate in the men's and women's tournaments in 2025. The ACC will have 18 teams next season with the additions of California, Stanford and SMU.

Commissioner Jim Phillips hinted at limiting the field for the tournaments in October.

"I think you've got to earn your way to play in, I think, the most prestigious postseason basketball tournaments in the country," Phillips said then. "And if you don't get to a certain threshold, then you just don't make it that year."

Phillips said the current four-day schedule has "a nice flow" and said he was "not overly interested in adding one additional day."

The final decision was made at the ACC's Winter Meetings, which concluded Wednesday.

Most coaches, however, were opposed to such a change.

"Somehow I hope that we can figure out how to let everybody go, even if it means extending Tuesday one game or even adding a Monday to it," NC State coach Kevin Keatts said in October.

Said Clemson coach Brad Brownell in October: "If you don't make the NCAA Tournament, your conference tournament is your chance. So you'd be taking that away from some teams. It doesn't happen often where low-seeded teams win, but the fact that you kind of get that chance."

The basketball tournaments have grown as the ACC expanded through the decades to its current 15-team configuration.

The men will continue to play a 20-game conference schedule, and the women will continue with an 18-game league slate in 2024-25.

The 2025 men's basketball tournament will be held in Charlotte. The 2025 women's basketball tournament will be held in Greensboro.