Cal Sports Report

Two ACC Teams -- Duke and North Carolina -- in Top-10 of Preseason Basketball Poll

Cal plays both those teams on the road this season, and hosts neither of them. Kansas is No. 1

Jake Curtis

Cal will face the tough Duke crowd this season
Cal will face the tough Duke crowd this season / Rob Kinnan-Imagn Images
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Two ACC teams are ranked among the top 10 teams in the preseason AP men's college basketball poll released Monday, but neither of them comes to Berkeley this season.

Duke is the highest ranked ACC team at No. 7, and Cal travels to Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, North Carolina, to face the Blue Devils on Wednesday, February 12.  North Carolina is ranked just two spots behind at No. 9, and the Golden Bears play the Tar Heels at the Dean E. Smith Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on Wednesday, January 15.

Neither of those high-powered teams makes an appearance in Berkeley during the 2024-25 season.

Duke features the nation's No. 1 recruit in freshman Cooper Flagg, while North Carolina has 2024 first-team All-American and ACC Player of the Year RJ Davis.

Duke and North Carolina are the only ACC teams ranked in the top-25 of the preseason AP poll, which suggests the conference will be wide open.  That’s good news for Cal, which has roster made up almost entirely of players acquired in the offseason through the transfer portal. Cal went 13-19 overall and 9-11 in the Pac-12 last season, but none of the top eight scorers from that squad returns for the Bears' first season in the ACC.

Wake Forest received 37 voting points in the AP poll, which would have placed the Demon Deacons 30th in the rankings, while Miami earned 11 voting points, putting the Hurricanes 37th.  Clemson and Louisville were the only other ACC teams to receive votes.

Cal was not one of the 55 teams that received votes in the AP poll.

Kansas starts the season as the No. 1 team, followed by No. 2 Alabama, No. 3 Connecticut (the two-time defending national champ), No.4 Houston and No. 5 Iowa State. Gonzaga is the highest ranked West Coast team at No. 6, with Arizona at No. 10 and UCLA at No. 22 to round out the three West Coast teams in the top-25.

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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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