By AARON BEARD AP Basketball Writer
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Luke Loucks remembers winning an Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament title at Florida State when Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams and his coach, Leonard Hamilton, were sideline fixtures.
Thirteen years later, those guys have all headed into retirement, along with multiple other marquee names who weren’t even in the league when Loucks played.
Now Loucks is a 35-year-old first-time head coach for the Seminoles. He’s one of four additions to the coaching ranks in the league alongside Miami’s Jai Lucas, N.C. State’s Will Wade and Virginia’s Ryan Odom. It’s part of a continuing makeover in the ACC after losing Williams at North Carolina, Krzyzewski at Duke, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim, Notre Dame’s Mike Brey, Miami’s Jim Larrañaga, Virginia’s Tony Bennett — and Loucks’ predecessor in Hamilton.
“There was a true backbone to this league with historic coaches,” Loucks said Wednesday during the league’s preseason media days.
“Now you look at the league, six more teams than when I played … but there’s a new wave of youthfulness, guys that have a lot of energy, that I also think will also be those legendary coaches. It’s just they’re about 20 to 30 years behind in age.”
Steady changes
To Loucks’ point, the ACC has been going through a sideline reset in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Williams was first into retirement in April 2021, followed by fellow Hall of Famers with four-decade runs in Coach K and Boeheim in the subsequent years. Four other coaches have also ended long runs in Brey (23 years), Hamilton (23), Bennett (15) and Larrañaga (14), with Bennett joining Williams, Krzyzewski and Boeheim as coaches exiting with at least one NCAA championship on the résumé.
The average coaching tenure for ACC schools during the 2020-21 season was 13.47 years. This year it will be 4.06, with 14 of 18 schools making coaching changes darting to 2020-21.
And that leaves Clemson’s Brad Brownell, starting his 16th season, as the senior member of the bunch.
“You can be a pretty good coach, I didn’t all of a sudden get that much smarter,” Brownell said. “I’d like to think I wasn’t that much dumber in 2013 and 2014. But we didn’t have the kind of facilities and support that we needed in order to help us. So it all works both ways.
“I do think we have a great influx of talented young coaches in our league. i think you’ve got guys that can be at their schools for decades.”
Quick risers
Loucks and Lucas are the “youngsters” of the new quartet.
Loucks arrives from the NBA coaching ranks, starting with support roles with the Golden State Warriors — including during two of their NBA titles — and coming off a three-year run as an assistant coach with the Sacramento Kings.
Lucas, 36, coached at Texas and Kentucky before working the past three seasons under Duke’s Jon Scheyer.
That gave Lucas an up-close look at another young coach making the transition to first-time head coach while following a longtime winner. Scheyer was 35 in his first season as successor to his mentor in Krzyzewski, a five-time NCAA champion who won 1,202 games.
“So just being there and having a front-row seat for that, I think the biggest thing I took away from Jon was just the attention to detail that’s needed when starting a program,” Lucas said.
“Mine is a little bit different in the sense of building it from a clean slate, but understanding that everything you do in the beginning and the first couple of months is going to set the foundation for how the program is moving forward.”
A homecoming
Odom, 51, took a longer journey back to a familiar Cavaliers home after Bennett’s unexpected exit on the eve of last season.
His father, Dave, was an assistant coach at Virginia under Terry Holland during the 1980s. And Ryan served as a ball boy for home games.
He brought up those ties Tuesday, including memories of 7-foot-4 program great Ralph Sampson’s final home game in 1983 — which included Sampson missing two critical late free throws but getting a tipped-out rebound for a go-ahead basket.
“They’re all real memories for me,” Odom said.
Odom also has another notable tie to the Virginia program, though from the other sideline: He was the UMBC head coach when the Retrievers beat the Cavaliers in 2018 for the first 16-vs-1 upset in the NCAA Tournament. He later spent two years as head coach at Utah State, then the last two at VCU.
“There’s pressure with every job no matter what level you coach at,” Odom said. “This obviously is the highest level and it’s more covered and all that, so it’s more in your face from that perspective. But I don’t know that that’s necessarily going to feel any different for me.”
Back in the spotlight
Then there’s the 42-year-old Wade, who is a power conference coach for a second time after his first stint at LSU ended with him fired for NCAA rules violations.
He spent two years at McNeese State, winning 28 games and upsetting Clemson to open the NCAA Tournament last year. And he landed with the Wolfpack, who fired Kevin Keatts after he followed an unexpected run to the 2024 Final Four with a 12-win crashout.
Wade has been blunt and unapologetically confident, leaning into the program’s “Red Reckoning” branding after an offseason retooling that added multiple notable transfers like Texas Tech’s Darrion Williams, Michigan State’s Tre Holloman and Ven-Allen Lubin from Wolfpack rival UNC.
“It’s going to be a reckoning for the ACC and college basketball,” Wade said last month. “You’re going to have to deal with us.”
It’s a confidence that has appealed to a rabid fan base longing for consistent basketball success, notably with runs to the 1974 and 1983 NCAA championships.
“You don’t want to be sailing against the wind,” Wade said Wednesday. “You want to get the wind behind your sails and get moving. So I think that winning in Year 1 will be good. And we’re going to win.”