Travel Aside, the ACC Has Been Good for Cal Basketball

The travel remains challenging but Year II in the ACC has been good for Cal basketball.

A year after going 6-14 in conference play in their inaugural season in the ACC, Cal takes a 7-7 record into the final two weeks of the regular season.

The league is much improved and so are the Bears, who are in contention for their first NCAA tournament bid in 11 years.

“The ACC has really pushed us to be the best versions of ourselves,” said coach Mark Madsen, who inherited a program that was 3-29 the year before he arrived for the 2023-24 campaign.

Stanford coach Kyle Smith agrees with his Cal counterpart.

“The breakup of the Pac-12 . . . was just a travesty,” Smith said “The only programs that are somewhat surviving are Arizona . . . and I think Cal and Stanford are a little bit on the uptick, too. I think the ACC has been really good for our brand and our basketball.”

While Stanford (16-11, 5-9) likely willl need to win the ACC tournament to land an NCAA bid, the Bears can reach 20 overall victories with a win Wednesday night at home against SMU (19-8, 8-6).

Among the dozen former Pac-12 teams currently playing in four other conferences, only Arizona (12-2 in the Big 12) and UCLA (10-6 in the Big Ten) have better conference records than what the Bears has fashioned in the ACC. And Cal owns a neutral-site, non-conference victory over the Bruins.

No doubt, conference success hinges to a degree — perhaps a large degree — on the qualify of each of those leagues. A year ago, the ACC landed just four teams in the NCAA field. ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi currently projects eight — although he has Cal as the No. 73 team in a 68-team field.

Either way — and conference TV money aside — there’s no denying things are working out better for the Bears than for Oregon (3-13 in the Big Ten) or Utah (2-12 in the Big 12).

“Our travel’s brutal, going to the East Coast all the times that we do,” Madsen said. “But we play against Duke, we play against Carolina, we play against Louisville and this is a great, great basketball conference, so it’s definitely pushed us to be better.”

Here’s how all 12 former Pac-12 programs have fared so far this season:

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