Cal's Dai Dai Ames Named Third-Team All-ACC

Cal's Dai Dai Ames, who scored 31 points in Cal's loss to Wake Forest in the Bears final regular-season game on Saturday, was named to the third-team All-ACC basketball team, which was announced by the conference on Monday.

Ames was the only Cal player named to one of the three five-man teams, and Ames was the last played selected to the third team based on the number of votes he received from the 86-member panel that consisting of the ACC's 18 head coaches and 68 members of the media.

Ames, whose real first name is Darrin, leads the Bears in scoring at 16.9 points per game heading into Wednesday's ACC tournament game against Florida State. Ames played the 2023-24 season at Kansas State and the 2024-25 season at Virginia before transferring to Cal for this season, when he was a junior.

Cal guard Justin Pippen was one of 10 additional players who received honorable mention.

Cal head coach Mark Madsen received one voting point in coach of the year voting, placing him sixth. Duke's John Scheyer was named ACC coach of the year.

Duke freshman Cameron Boozer was named the ACC player of the year, and he received 84 of the 86 votes. Ebuka Okorie of Stanford, and Thijs De Ridder of Virginia received one vote apiece.

The All-ACC first team consisted of Boozer, North Carolina's Caleb Wilson, Stanford's Ebuka Okorie, Miami's Malik Reneau and Virginia's Thijs De Ridder.

All are freshmen except for Reneau.

Here are the all-conference selections, with the number votes each player received