The ACC preseason poll has been released.
1. Duke
2. North Carolina
3. Wake Forest
4. Clemson
5. Virginia
6. Miami
7. Pitt
8. NC State
9. Louisville
10. Notre Dame
11. Syracuse
12. Georgia Tech
13. SMU
14. Virginia Tech
15. Florida State
16. Cal
17. Stanford
18. Boston College
In addition, Pitt guard Ishmael Leggett was selected for Second Team All-ACC. RJ Davis was selected as Preseason ACC Player of the Year. Davis, if he were to win the award this season, would be the first player to win back-to-back ACC POY awards since JJ Redick.
Pitt was recently selected as the No. 4 team in the ACC in Ken Pomeroy’s preseason rankings.
Pomeroy’s ratings are almost always a topic of conversation throughout the basketball season along with the NCAA’s NET rankings. On Monday, Pomeroy released his preseason ratings.
Pitt came in at No. 38 in the country and No. 4 in the ACC.
This is how the ACC stacks up in his rankings.
1. Duke (No. 2 overall)
2. North Carolina (No. 14 overall)
3. Clemson (No. 24 overall)
4. Pitt (No. 38 overall)
5. Wake Forest (No. 44 overall)
6. NC State (No. 52 overall)
7. Miami (No. 55 overall)
8. Louisville (No. 64 overall)
9. Syracuse (No. 68 overall)
10. Notre Dame (No. 69 overall)
11. Georgia Tech (No. 70 overall)
12. SMU (No. 74 overall)
13. Virginia (No. 78 overall)
14. Florida State (No. 90 overall)
15. Virginia Tech (No. 92 overall)
16. Stanford (No. 99 overall)
17. Boston College (No. 113 overall)
18. Cal (No. 135 overall)
Pomeroy’s system has Pitt’s offensive rating ranked No. 32 overall and its defensive rating No. 50 overall.
See Pomeroy’s full rankings here.
Pitt is looking to earn its third-straight 20-win season under Capel. The Panthers return Lowe, Ishmael Leggett, Zack Austin, and the Diaz Graham twins, among others, while also bringing in Corhen, Damian Dunn, Amsal Delalic, Brandin Cummings, and Amdy Ndiaye.
“We are a program, where I think the identity of our program is that we all have a chip on our shoulders,” Capel told reporters, including PSN’s Mitchell Northam. “We all feel like we have something to prove. None of the guys on my team were recruited by other ACC teams. None of them. They all have felt like they can play at this level, I think they all realized this is the best conference, and so we recruited them, we believed in them. So they all feel like they have something to prove. Because of that, because of our belief in them, our staff, and how the city has embraced them, there is a level of gratefulness and appreciation that they have, and a love that they have. I think it’s one of the factors that we were able to retain the guys that we kept. They all could have gone to different places, they could’ve chose to do something different. But they wanted to be back here, I think, because of those things and their belief in what we’re doing and how we’re helping them become better.”
It’s all such a crapshoot with the roster turnover these days. Pitt could finish anywhere from 12th to 5th and I wouldn’t be surprised.