Cal Sports Report

Cal Men Picked to Finish 16th in ACC Preseason Basketball Poll

Duke and North Carolina projected to finish first and second. No Golden Bears players on preseason all-ACC team

Jake Curtis

Cal head coach Mark Madsen
Cal head coach Mark Madsen / Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images
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The good news: Cal is not picked to finish last in the ACC and the Bears are picked to finish ahead of Stanford.

The discouraging news: Cal is picked to finish 16th in the ACC preseason men's basketball poll released Tuesday. And there are only 18 teams in the ACC. Stanford and Boston College are the only teams picked to finish behind Cal in the preseason media poll.

"I think Stanford is a little undervalued," Seth Greenberg said on the ACC Network Tuesday.

Duke is picked to win the ACC, and North Carolina is picked to finish second. They are the only two ACC teams in the preseason AP poll, so the conference is wide open.

Cal is entering its first season in the ACC and its second season under coach Mark Madsen. The Bears went 13-19 overall and 9-11 in the Pac-12 last season, but the top eight scorers from that Cal team are gone, replaced by a bunch of transfers.

Neither Cal now Stanford had a player named to the preseason all-ACC first team or second team.

The preseason player of the year is North Carolina's RJ Davis, who was the ACC player of the year last season. The preseason rookie of the year is Duke's Connor Flagg, who was rated the nation' top recruit this year.

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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