Louisville women’s basketball head coach Jeff Walz enters the 2024-25 season with one of his most inexperienced rosters in more than a decade.
Doesn’t matter; he’s got the Cardinals once again jockeying for position at the top of the ACC preseason poll, which was released Tuesday. The conference’s 18 head coaches and its Blue Ribbon Panel of 61 select voters ranked U of L fourth.
Defending ACC Tournament champion Notre Dame took the top spot with 70 first-place votes. The Fighting Irish are coming off a Sweet 16 appearance and boast the league’s preseason Player of the Year, Hannah Hidalgo.
N.C. State, which reached its first Final Four since 1998 this past spring, came in second with eight first-place votes.
Louisville finished the 2023-24 season at 24-10 overall and fifth in the ACC with a 12-6 record. For the first time under Walz, it got bounced from the NCAA Tournament without winning a game.
“We laid an egg,” Walz said during ACC Tipoff last week in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I’ll be the first to admit (that).
“A lot of programs might be excited to (just) make the tournament. That is not the expectations here. It didn’t go as we had hoped, and we’re working to change that.”
This go-around, the Cards’ roster features eight freshmen — more than any other school in the conference — and a core group of returners headlined by Olivia Cochran. They open the season at 2:30 p.m. Nov. 4 in Paris against UCLA at the Aflac Oui-Play event. ACC play begins with a 1 p.m. tipoff Dec. 15 against N.C. State at the KFC Yum! Center.
U of L, at No. 17, was one of six ACC teams to crack the preseason AP Top 25. The others were: Notre Dame (No. 6), N.C. State (No. 9), Duke (No. 11), North Carolina (No. 15) and Florida State (No. 19).
With the additions of California, SMU and Stanford, only the top 15 teams in the final regular-season standings will earn spots in the ACC Tournament; which runs March 5-9 at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina.
See the projected order of finish below:
ACC women’s basketball 2024-25 preseason poll: Louisville picked fourth
Note: First-place votes are in parentheses.
-
Notre Dame (70)
-
NC State (8)
-
Duke
-
Louisville
-
Florida State
-
North Carolina
-
Stanford (1)
-
Miami
-
Virginia
-
Georgia Tech
-
Syracuse
-
Virginia Tech
-
Clemson
-
California
-
Boston College
-
SMU
-
Wake Forest
-
Pittsburgh
ACC women’s basketball 2024-25 preseason awards: Louisville freshman Imari Berry named to watch list
Freshman Imari Berry was Louisville’s lone recipient of ACC preseason recognition. The 5-foot-10 guard from Clarksville, Tennessee, appeared on the conference’s Newcomer Watch List.
Berry, who earned McDonald’s All-American status and was crowned Tennessee Class 4A Ms. Basketball as a senior at Clarksville High School, was the highest-ranked signee of Walz’s vaunted 2024 class — coming in at No. 19 overall on espnW’s top 100. Two of her new teammates, Mackenly Randolph (No. 23) and Tajianna Roberts (No. 24), weren’t far behind her on that list.
The Cards’ 2024 recruiting haul ranked sixth in the country and first in the ACC on espnW.
“Are we always doing the right thing? No, but they’re doing it hard,” Walz said of his freshmen at ACC Tipoff. “That’s one thing that we talk about and I always talk about: ‘We can teach you and try to show you what to do, but, when we’ve got to teach effort and coach effort, it’s not going to happen.'”
Here’s a look at the ACC’s preseason award winners:
-
Preseason Player of the Year: Hannah Hidalgo (Notre Dame)
-
Preseason All-ACC: Hannah Hidalgo (Notre Dame), Ta’Niya Latson (Florida State), Saniya Rivers (N.C. State), Aziaha James (N.C. State), Olivia Miles (Notre Dame), Sonia Citron (Notre Dame), Makayla Timpson (Florida State), Alyssa Ustby (North Carolina), Reigan Richardson (Duke) and Kymora Johnson (Virginia)
-
Preseason Newcomer Watch List: Toby Fournier (Duke), Imari Berry (Louisville), Kate Koval (Notre Dame), Zamareya Jones (N.C. State) and Liza Karlen, Notre Dame
Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville women’s basketball 4th in ACC predicted order of finish
