Micah Shrewsberry gives blunt assessment of ACC's struggles in 2024-25

The 2024-25 season was a disappointing one for not just Notre Dame but the ACC as a whole. With the Irish’s season coming to an end in the conference tournament, head coach Micah Shrewsberry was able to take some time to reflect on what went wrong.

With the ACC now projected to get around three or four teams in the ACC Tournament, a drop off from the past few seasons, Shrewsberry looked at what the ACC can do to improve. In particular, he feels that individual teams need to win more games in non-conference play.

“I can’t speak for the whole league and what we need to do,” Micah Shrewsberry said. “But individually we all have to do our own part. We’ve got to win games in the non-conference. We can’t get waxed by the SEC in the league thing. We’ve got to win games in that.”

Notre Dame finished the season 15-18. That included a losing record in ACC play and a 7-6 record in non-conference play. In there, was a five-game losing streak where the Irish lost to teams from the Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC. As a conference, overall, the ACC had a chance to flash its depth against the vaunted SEC in the ACC-SEC Challenge. However, in those games, they went just 2-14.

“We didn’t do our part. Granted, our best player was hurt when we had opportunities. Rutgers, Houston, Creighton, Georgia, we played them all back-to-back-to-back-to-back without Markus Burton, but if you get one of those, you get a couple of those, that boosts your profile as a league. Now we’ve all got to go do it. We’ve all got to go do it. Scheduling is important. Beating people is important. Now when you get out of the non-conference, now winning against each other means a lot,” Shrewsberry said.

“I can only speak for Notre Dame. We’ve got to get better. We’ve got to get better, and we are going to get better. But we’ve got to win games. We’ve got to win games in the non-conference to boost your league up. We stubbed our toe in that. We didn’t do that as a league.”

The latest bracketology from ESPN has just four ACC teams in the field. That includes Duke, Clemson, Louisville, and North Carolina. Notably, the Tar Heels are the final Last Four Team in the bracket. That means they have very little room for error and likely need to go on a run in the ACC Tournament to solidify their resume. If that number falls to three teams in the field, it would be the fewest ACC schools in the NCAA Tournament since 2000.

When asked about this, ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi made it clear that the ACC simply has a basketball issue. Their teams aren’t as good as they used to be, largely, because of how the sport has changed.

“It pains me to say that, but whatever it is that’s driving the macroeconomics of the college athletics industry, and let’s be blunt and call it what it is, okay, is not favoring the ACC right now. So, this has to do with the players on your roster,” Lunardi said.

“And at the end of the day what are you willing to do in terms of compensating that? I can 1-68 colleges and universities with the best of them, but on any of our datasheets, there’s not a column for NIL. At least, not yet. So, we’re not privy to what they’re spending at Auburn vs. what they’re spending at Pitt, let’s say. Something has changed in the macroeconomics that is causing, like three out of 18 [teams making the NCAA Tournament] is almost unthinkable to me. There’s still a chance for four or five.”

At this point, it’s too late to change how the season went for the ACC in the 2024-25 season. However, in the future, there are clearly steps the ACC needs to take to improve.