ACC Losing Streaks

Some gotta win, some gotta lose

Only one significant ongoing losing streak has been compiled among ACC men’s teams and that belongs, not surprisingly, to Louisville, which lost its mojo once Rick Pitino left.

Actually there’s a second ongoing run of losing efforts that’s even longer, adopted by the ACC along with the California Golden Bears. Cal has posted seven losing efforts in a row, all compiled while a member of the Pac-12. That run began in 2018, the same year UL began sputtering.

Both of those schools established estimable records prior to their slides. Cal made 4 NCAA appearances in the five years from 2009 to 2013 under first Ben Braun and then Mike Montgomery, 9 between 2001 and 2013. The Bears last made the NCAAs in 2016 and last got beyond the second round in 1997.

In fact, among the few times the Berkeley school advanced three rounds into the NCAAs in modern times was 1993 when it bumped a Duke squad trying for its sixth straight Final Four.

That year Cal coach Lou Campanelli was fired after 17 games due to his virulent berating of individual players, sourly echoing the likes of Bob Knight, Bob Huggins, and Dave Leitao. “There were things that were unwarranted and inappropriate and inexcusable,” the Cal AD said after overhearing a Campanelli locker room tirade.

The Cal coach’s dismissal marked a brief, welcome interlude in which excessive, personal verbal abuse by coaches was cause for termination. Note that Huggins and Leitao were active on major college sidelines long after Campanelli was canned.

Campanelli was replaced at Berkeley by Todd Bozeman, who lasted three years before earning an NCAA probation for recruiting violations.

Until the last few years Louisville was an NCAA regular for most of a half-century, winning NCAA championships in 1980, 1986 and 2013. Then came the kerfuffle caused by Pitino’s missteps, well known to ACC fans by this time. Neither Chris Mack, who built a strong reputation at Xavier, nor alum Kenny Payne could arrest the stumbles.

Virginia, the ACC’s first expansion addition, owns the longest losing streak in league history, enduring 16 straight unsuccessful seasons from 1955 through 1970 under Evan “Bus” Male, Billy McCann and Bill Gibson. Male, a 9-time letterwinner as a UVa undergrad, is recalled for the immortal declaration that competing in the new ACC was like “bear hunting with a switch.” Not Cal’s Golden Bears, presumably.