It is officially tournament season in NCAA basketball. March has arrived, and with that comes conference championship week. Louisville basketball has played its way to a 6 seed in the ACC Tournament and a first-round bye, playing its first game on Wednesday afternoon. They were just two games out of the double bye and actually may have lucked out.
3 Biggest X-factors for Louisville basketball entering the 2026 ACC Tournament
With Louisville losing to both Clemson and UNC in the final couple of weeks of the regular season, they finished 11-7 in the ACC. Both North Carolina and Clemson finished the regular season 12-6 and therefore finished in 4th and 5th place, respectively. That draw has the Cards on the top side of the bracket, along with two-seed Virginia. If Louisville had won even one of those games, it would have been on the same side of the bracket as Duke and likely would have had to face them in the semifinals.
In this bracket, they would not see the Blue Devils until the championship game.
This kind of “luck” could work out for Pat Kelsey’s team as they are still trying to fix some things before the NCAA Tournament starts. Besides Mikel Brown Jr.’s injury concerns, the team still has plenty to work on if it wants to make a run. Winning a few games in the conference tournament, with or without Brown Jr., would be a good sign and have Card fans feeling confident heading into Selection Sunday. If they are going to do that, they will need some breaks to go their way in the ACC Tournament to avoid certain teams.
Here are three teams Louisville desperately wants to avoid in the ACC Tournament