Local schools excited, ready for 2026-27 season

The 2026-27 basketball season is fast approaching, and the ACC Tipoff gave us a good look at the attitudes North Carolina’s four P4 women’s basketball teams have heading into the year.

The Duke Blue Devils are heading into the 2026-27 season as the ACC’s clear favorite.

Duke won both the ACC regular season and tournament last year and went to the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament, falling to the eventual champs UCLA.

In six years at the helm, coach Kara Lawson has brought Duke, who finished as the No. 5-ranked team in the country, back to the upper echelon of women’s basketball, and her goal is to stay there.

“Our expectations stay pretty much focused on the same things,” Lawson said. “We want to compete at a high level, we want to be one of the hardest-playing teams, and we want to challenge ourselves against the best teams and see how good we can be.”

The Blue Devils will certainly be challenging themselves this year as their nonconference schedule includes matchups with all four of the teams that made last year’s Final Four.

“We always want to play one of the top schedules in the country,” Lawson said. “That’s been the case since I’ve had control of the schedule at Duke. It’s what we want to do. We want to see where we are in a given time, and that exposes us and forces us to get better.”

With nine returning players, including starters Toby Fournier, Delaney Thomas and Riley Nelson, Duke should be up to the task.

It’s been a steady climb for the UNC Tar Heels, now entering their eighth year under coach Courtney Banghart, but it seems like things are starting to really click for the team from Chapel Hill.

Last season was the Tar Heels’ best conference finish in the last decade, finishing third in the regular season and making it to the semifinals in the ACC Tournament.

UNC followed that with a second straight Sweet Sixteen appearance in the NCAA Tournament and finished the year as the No. 13-ranked team in the country.

“We feel like we’ve had some really sustained success, and we feel like we’re ready to take another step on that climb,” Banghart said. “We’re bigger, we’re faster, we’re more athletic and we’re more dynamic than we were a year ago.”

The Tar Heels are returning eight players but lost most of its starting roster in the offseason, so UNC will be relying a lot on sophomore Nyla Brooks, who was a 2026 ACC All-Freshman selection, as well as transfers Chloe Clardy (Stanford), Gabby White (Virginia) and Achol Akot (Oklahoma State).

The last four seasons have certainly been a mixed bag for the NC State Wolfpack, who had both a Sweet Sixteen and Final Four appearance to go with first- and second-round exits.

Last year was certainly not the year the Wolfpack had hoped for though, finishing fourth in the ACC and winning one game in the NCAA Tournament.

“Last year we finished fourth out of 18 teams in this unbelievable conference,” said coach Wes Moore, who is entering his 14th year with the program. “In a lot of eyes, you would say fourth out of 18 really strong programs is a heck of a year. But our expectations are really high. Last year wasn’t what we wanted it to be, so we’re hoping that this year we can take it a little bit further.”

The biggest two pieces for the Wolfpack will be returners Zoe Brooks, entering her fourth year with NC State, and Khamil Pierre, both of whom were All-ACC First Team selections last year.

The Wake Forest Demon Deacons are entering their fifth year under head coach Megan Gebbia.

Things haven’t gone so well in Winston-Salem in recent years, with the Demon Deacons having won only 13 conference games in the past four seasons combined.

Wake Forest finished 15th in the ACC last season, finishing with a 14-18 record (4-14 in conference play) despite starting the year 9-0.

“Our goal is to get to the postseason, right, and move our way up the ACC,” Gebbia said. “I think we have a talented roster this year, one that we purposely went in and recruited. I think our guard play is going to be really good. I think we have attacking guards and really good bigs. It’s just exciting to kind of put a whole roster together that we feel is really competitive this year.”

Wake Forest returns six players, including graduate Mary Carter and sophomore Opal Bird, and the Demon Deacons are hoping to make a splash and qualify for their first NCAA appearance since 2021.