CHARLOTTE, N.C. – As his team practiced at Duke, ahead of its Feb. 15 game against the Blue Devils, Stanford coach Kyle Smith found himself having a bit of a fan-boy moment.
“We had Coach K at our practice,” Smith said this week. “So, I might have been a little distracted.”
Stanford and Cal played their inaugural basketball seasons in the ACC conference in 2024-25, and while much of the attention surrounding that centered on the cross-country travel and extended road trips the teams endured, the players and coaches saw far more positives about their new league home.
“I think it’s given us the exposure that Cal needed,” Bears guard Andrej Stojakovic said after the team’s season ending 78-73 loss to rival Stanford in the conference tournament on Wednesday. “It’s been a heck of an experience. I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
While the idea of Cal and Stanford playing each other in the ACC basketball tournament in Charlotte, almost 3,000 miles across the country, might have felt like some type of alternate, bizarro universe, Bears athletic director Jim Knowlton said his school’s fanbase is coming around to Cal’s new reality.
“I think it really has grown on our fanbase,” Knowlton said. “I think everyone’s starting to see the benefits.”
Chief among those has been the national exposure that the ACC has given the two California schools.
“Everyone loved the Pac-12. It was magnificent in so many ways,” Knowlton said. “But I honestly think what we learned is that, because of the distribution challenges with the Pac-12 Network, it really was a regional brand. I think every one of our 550,000 alums are seeing that this is really helping us be a national brand.”
That brand didn’t exactly help draw fans to Maples Pavilion in Stanford or Haas Pavilion in Berkeley this year.
Stanford averaged 3,131 fans per home game this season, the lowest mark in the conference, while Cal was just a spot ahead, drawing 3,889 a contest. That they both finished below perennial poor-attendance champion Boston College (4,605 average this year) is undeniably discouraging, though not unexpected.
Stanford averaged 3,538 fans per game last year in its final season in the Pac-12, and Cal was at 4,566.
Of course, most of the ACC’s biggest brands – and the four teams that ended up in the tournament semifinals – all hosted Cal and Stanford this year.
Next season, Duke, North Carolina, Louisville and Clemson travel west.
Cal coach Mark Madsen said his wife, Hannah, a musician, has grown into more and more of a basketball fan.
“She’s already talking to all of her friends about the fact that Duke is coming to Cal,” Madsen said. “North Carolina, Louisville, Notre Dame, USC, Vanderbilt. If there’s ever a year for season tickets at Cal, this is the year. These are going to be sellouts. It’s going to be an unbelievable environment, and we’re going to be playing high-level basketball against the top teams.”
Cal has sold out Haas Pavilion just once in the last eight years – for an in-state game against USC last season – but, like Madsen, Knowlton believes the ACC’s blue bloods coming West will change that.
“If I’m a betting man, I’d say Haas Pavilion is going to be packed. It’s going to be sold out,” Knowlton said. “We’re excited to have Duke at our house. We’re excited to have North Carolina.”
Of course, the trajectory of the two programs figures to help put more backsides in chair-backs next season.
In his first year with the Cardinal, Smith – the former Washington State coach – took a squad pegged in the preseason to finish 17th out of 18 ACC teams, to a 20-win season and a spot in the tournament quarterfinals.
Thursday, Stanford (20-13) came within a Chucky Hepburn buzzer beater of beating second-seeded Louisville and reaching the semifinals, and should have the chance to play more in the NIT.
Madsen has reinvigorated Cal basketball in his two seasons. And the Bears (14-19), despite beating just one ACC team with a winning record this season, made a bit of ACC history in Year 1, becoming just the second 15-seed to win a tournament game when they topped Virginia Tech in double overtime on Tuesday, to set up the game against Stanford.
It’s why, even after losing to Louisville to wrap up two weeks on the road, the Cardinal had no complaints about their new league.
“Coach always said that’s what we signed up for,” Stanford star Maxime Raynaud said. “We’re happy to play in one of the best conferences in the country. Grateful to spend more and more time with the guys, even if that means we have longer plane rides. We’re in an amazing position.”
Officials at both schools said they put tremendous effort into helping their teams manage the travel challenges this year, but also said they learned valuable lessons that will make things even smoother next season.
Smith said he told his players they were “astronauts.”
“We’re kind of the first ones out here, journeying into space and figuring this thing out,” he said. “I’m sure there will be things that we’ll take away that — practices we’ll do better.”
Stanford won three road games and lost eight, with two of those victories coming within the state. It won at Santa Clara and at Cal. The third came with an impressive one-point win against North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Cal went 2-11 on the road, including 1-9 in ACC road games.
“Our players and our staff and myself, we feel energized being in this conference,” Madsen said. “Is the travel hard? Absolutely. But to be able to play at this level of competition is such an opportunity for us.”