A Look at What Stanford, Cal, and SMU Bring to the ACC Hoops Landscape

The ACC is about to add Stanford, Cal, and SMU to the conference.

Here’s a look at how those 3 teams have performed in the last 5 years in comparison to ACC teams.

All I’ve used here is each team’s final KenPom record from the last 5 seasons.

A few quick observations before we look at the numbers:

• Stanford, SMU, and Cal have only one top-50 finish between the 3 schools in the last 5 seasons (Stanford in 2019–2020)
• Stanford, SMU, and Cal have 6 top-100 KenPom finishes (out of a possible 15) in the past 5 years
• Cal has been one of the worst Power-5 teams in the country over the last 5 seasons — averaging out at a 184th finish. For context, there have only been 3 ACC schools in the last 5 years with a finish lower than that average.
• If you zoom in a little closer to the last 3 seasons, Stanford has been a pretty solid middle-of-the-pack ACC school. They have the 8th highest average ranking over the last 3 years. SMU would be considerably higher here as well, but they struggled to a 183rd ranking last year to throw off the previous two seasons of 56th and 62nd.

If I was to compare these incoming teams to recent history, here’s what I’d say:

• Stanford is most equivalent to Syracuse/Wake Forest
• SMU is like Pittsburgh, just flipped (The Panthers had a good year but struggled the previous two; SMU had a rough year last year but were on the up the two years before). They also remind me of Notre Dame from last year (two good seasons followed by a not so good one).
• Cal is most like Boston College and last year’s Louisville

The new-look ACC is nearing closer and closer.

I’ll be keeping an eye on these 3 newcomers over the course of this hoops season as well.

What do you guys think of the new additions when it comes to ACC Hoops? Reply in the comments!