Report: ACC expected to shrink basketball schedule to boost NCAA Tournament profile

The ACC is “strongly considering” reducing its conference schedule from 20 games to 18 in order to bolster its participation in March Madness, according to CBS Sports’ Brandon Marcello. This comes after the conference sent just four teams to the NCAA Tournament during the 2024-25 season.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, as well as althetic directors across the conference have reportedly been in “active discussions” with ESPN to impliment the changes into the upcoming 2025-26 season. According to the report, the proposal is expected to be approved by ACC administrators when the league meets for its annual spring meetings in May.

This model would consist of each team playing one game against each conference opponent, as well as two games against a “permanent rival.” Those two rivalry matchups would be home and home matchups for the two programs. For example, Duke and North Carolina.

The Blue Devils and Tar Heels ended up being two of the four teams that the ACC sent to the NCAA Tournament this past March. They were joined by the Louisville Cardinals and Clemson Tigers.

However, this won’t be the first time the ACC has played an 18-game schedule. That was the previous model the conference used before transitioning to 20 games during the 2019-2020 season, which coincided with the launch of the ACC Network. Though, the additions of Cal, Stanford and SMU will shake up how conference matchups occur from how it was then.

Despite only holding less than six percent of the total March Madness field, they were able to send one team to the Final Four in the Duke Blue Devils. They would go on to face the Big 12’s Houston Cougars in the matchup in San Antonio, where they’d fall 70-67 in a chaotic finish. Louisville, Clemson and North Carolina were all eliminated in the first round. However, the Tar Heels were on the winning end of their First Four game against San Diego State.

The ACC hasn’t won a national championship since the 2019 season, when the Virginia Cavaliers captured the title under former head coach Tony Bennett. This continued a trend of an ACC team winning the title every other year with Duke (2015) and UNC (2017) winning it all in previous seasons. Whether reducing the total number of league games will be the solution to the six-year drought remains to be seen, but the hope is for the new schedule to help the ACC gain some extra notoriety on a national, non-conference level.