Month: May 2022

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Jason Williams, what a player.  I remember those Duke teams.  You felt like you had no chance to beat them, and you were right.  I especially remember the 2002 ACC Tournament final, which I was fortunate enough to attend.  NC State was coming off a huge win over eventual national champion Maryland in the semifinal.  Duke absolutely blew their doors off in a 91-61 win.  That was actually closer than their previous meeting, a 108-71 Duke win.  That 2002 Duke team was the only team in the 21 years of kenpom ratings to be both the best offensive and defensive team in the country.  I still have no idea how they lost to Indiana in the Sweet 16.  I had forgotten what happened at the end of that game.  Duke was down by four, and Williams buried a three… and got fouled… and missed the free throw.  Carlos Boozer got the rebound, probably got fouled on the putback but it wasn’t called, and that was the ballgame.

Here’s a stat.  Williams played for three years.  Guess what his record was against State, Carolina, and Wake?  23-1.  I don’t know how I would prove this without a lot of painstaking manual work, but it’s hard to imagine that anybody else in ACC history had a .958 winning percentage against the rest of the Big Four.

Looking at Williams’ accolades, a couple of things stand out.  He came in at the same time as UNC’s Joseph Forte, and through their first two years, I think you’d have to say that Forte was ahead by a nose.  He edged out Williams 48-43 in ACC Rookie of the Year voting, and did a bit better in All-ACC voting as well.  The next year, Williams, Forte, and Shane Battier were all unanimous first-team All-ACC, and they were the top three vote-getters for AP All-American as well.  But Battier and Forte each received 32 votes for ACC Player of the Year, with Williams getting 8.  In AP National Player of the Year voting, Williams and Forte finished tied for third behind Battier and Jamaal Tinsley of Iowa State.  In Wooden Award voting, Williams and Forte finished second and third behind Battier.

In 2002, Forte was in the NBA and Williams won National Player of the Year.  Williams did not, however, win ACC Player of the Year, as that honor went to Juan Dixon by a narrow margin.

To summarize, Williams was a two-time first team All-American and a National Player of the Year.  For me, that means automatic Top 20.  Williams is the only major conference player in college basketball with multiple 20+ point, 5+ assist seasons in the past 30 years.  He never lost an ACC Tournament game.  He is one of six freshmen to be named Most Outstanding Player of the ACC Tournament (the others are Phil Ford, Sam Perkins, Jerry Stackhouse, Brandan Wright, and Zion Williamson).  He is one of six three-year players to reach 2,000 career points (the others are David Thompson, Len Chappell, Lennie Rosenbluth, Charlie Scott, and Dennis Scott).

It’s fascinating (if fruitless) to speculate about what Williams’ NBA career would have been like.  He didn’t have a great rookie year, but you have to think that with his skill, athletic ability, and IQ, he would’ve eventually been an All-Star caliber player.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

It’s hard to remember that there was a time when Mike Krzyzewski was not the coach at Duke, but Mike Gminski remembers.  He played in the last four years of the Bill Foster era.  Foster was hired in 1974, inheriting a mess from Neill McGeachy and Bucky Waters.  His first three years, no improvement was evident.  But over a three-year period between 1976 and 1978, Foster added Jim Spanarkel, Gminski, Gene Banks, and Kenny Dennard, and in 1978 everything suddenly came together.  After going 2-10 in the ACC the previous year, the Devils got national attention by beating second-ranked UNC in January, went on to finish second in the ACC regular season, and ran through the ACC Tournament to claim the title.  Suddenly the Devils were a Top 10 team, and they rode that momentum all the way to the national championship game, where they lost to top-ranked Kentucky. 

The next year, with everyone back, plus heralded recruit Vince Taylor, the Blue Devils were preseason #1.  But as so often happens in sports, the next step was never taken.  Duke stumbled out of the gate, ripped off 11 out of 12 to get to 17-3, then dropped 3 more games down the stretch.  Still ranked #6 going into the NCAA Tournament, they were matched up with a St. John’s team that had already beaten them in the regular season. This time, the Blue Devils were without the injured Bob Bender and Kenny Dennard, and the Redmen pulled out a two-point win. Just like that, the Devils were done.

Despite the loss of Spanarkel, the Devils were preseason #3 going into Gminski’s senior season.  They got to #1 after wins over #2 Kentucky and #6 UNC, but again stumbled in ACC play, culminating in a 4-game losing streak in February that saw their ranking dip to #17.  But they pulled it together for an incredible 3-game run during the ACC Tournament.  However, before the NCAA Tournament began, Foster announced that he was leaving Duke to go to South Carolina.  He continued coaching through the NCAA Tournament, and the team responded well, winning their first game, then beating Kentucky at Rupp Arena in the Sweet 16.  But in the regional final, they lost to Joe Barry Carroll and the Purdue Boilermakers, and that’s how it ended for the G-Man.

Gminski had a great career.  Turned around a program, went to the national championship game, won 2 ACC Tournaments, ACC Player of the Year as a junior.  As a senior, Gminski statistically was even better, but Duke as a team was viewed as a disappointment, and POY went to Albert King of regular season champion Maryland.  He was a walking double-double and, with Tyler Hansbrough, is one of two players in the Top 10 in ACC career scoring and rebounding.  He was Consensus First Team All-American as a junior, and second team as a senior (which was bogus, as I wrote about here). Gminski was a rare recruiting misjudgment by Dean Smith, who thought he was too slow to be successful.

A lesser known skill of Gminski’s was not fouling.  In his ACC career, he committed only 240 fouls, a remarkably low number for a big man who played pretty much every minute of every game for 4 years.  In his NBA career, he played 938 games and fouled out exactly once.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

John Lucas made only one mistake in his career, and that was playing at the same time as David Thompson.  He arrived at Maryland in 1972 in the first year of freshman eligibility and plugged right in to the Len Elmore/Tom McMillen Terrapins, leading them to a #2 national ranking.  But they went 0-3 against NC State, including a two-point loss in the ACC Tournament final.  But because of NC State’s probation, the Terrapins received a bid to the NCAA Tournament anyway, where they lost to fourth-ranked Providence in a regional final.

The next season, the Terps reached #2 again and lost a total of five games all season: the season opener to #1 UCLA; at UNC; and three more games against NC State, including the so-called “Greatest Game of All Time” in the ACC, the 103-100 overtime ACC Tournament final.  The Terps were undoubtedly one of the five best teams in the country, but they stayed home in March.

The next season, Elmore and McMillen were gone, but Maryland didn’t miss a beat.  The Terps again reached #2 nationally, losing only three games during the regular season, and finally beat NC State, twice.  But Maryland found themselves matched up with the Wolfpack again in the ACC Tournament semifinals, and for the third straight year, Thompson and the Wolfpack sent the Terps home disappointed.  The good news is that the NCAA Tournament started taking at large teams, so they did make the tourney, losing to third-ranked Louisville in the regional final.

In 1976, with Thompson finally gone to the NBA, Maryland again reached #2 nationally for the fourth consecutive year.  And the ACC Tournament, after being staged at Greensboro Coliseum for many years, was finally moved to the Terrapins’ backyard in the Capital Centre.  But they couldn’t take advantage, falling to Virginia in the tournament semifinal. The Cavaliers went on to beat North Carolina in the final, becoming arguably the most unlikely ACC Tournament winner ever.

Few teams in basketball history had so little to show for so much.  No ACC titles, no Final Fours.  And yet, you can’t really say much negative about their team.  They were a great team, with great players; they just didn’t have David Thompson.  That’s really it.  The two times they did make it to the NCAA Tournament, they got a couple of really tough regional final draws.  I don’t think there was really any defect in their team.  If the ball had bounced differently for them, we would remember them as one of college basketball’s great teams.

For Lucas, perhaps more than any other player, there was a huge discrepancy between how he was regarded nationally, and how he was regarded locally.  It makes him very difficult to rank.  Nationally, he is often spoken of as one of the best players in ACC history.  In the Grant Hill post, I referenced the 2009 ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia, in which Lucas is named one of the 50 greatest college basketball players of all time and is the 10th ACC player listed.  Lucas’ All-America record is very impressive and would support that.

But he didn’t do nearly as well in All-ACC voting.  Don’t get me wrong, he was first team All-ACC three times, which isn’t terrible; but he never finished higher than third in the voting, and he never received serious consideration for ACC Player of the Year.  Obviously David Thompson had that locked down in 1974 and 1975, but why didn’t Lucas do better in 1976?  Let’s compare him to Mitch Kupchak.  That’s a convenient comparison since they were both in the Class of 1976.

Year	Lucas	Kupchak
1974	242 points, 1st team, 3rd overall	Nothing
1975	215 points, 1st team, 4th overall	252 points, 1st team, 3rd overall
1976	282 points, 1st team, 4th overall	310 points, 1st team, 1st overall, ACC POY

Who would you say has the more impressive record there?  I guess you could argue either way, but that’s the point.  We’re talking about whether Lucas was better than Mitch Kupchak, who was a fine player, but won’t be on anyone’s list of 50 greatest players in college basketball history.  If all we had to go on in evaluating Lucas was his All-ACC voting record, he’d be in the 50s or 60s, somewhere around where Kupchak is.

But Lucas in 1975 and 1976 did great in All-America balloting, finishing ahead of the same guys who were ahead of him in All-ACC.  In 1975, he finished well behind Skip Brown and Kupchak in All-ACC, but he was first/second team All-America while Brown and Kupchak were nowhere to be found.  In 1976, he finished behind Kupchak, Kenny Carr, and Phil Ford in All-ACC, but he was first team All-America, ahead of those same guys.

It’s confusing, and I don’t have a good explanation for it.  Typically, I trust the ACC voters more than the national voters, but somehow in this instance, I feel a little differently.  Lucas’s teams went 92-23 over his 4 years.  Maryland was still really good in 1975 and 1976, after Elmore and McMillen graduated, and Lucas was the unquestioned leader of those teams.  It’s hard for me to believe that he was the fourth-best player in the conference each of those years.  I’m not going all in and calling him one of the 50 greatest players in college basketball history, but I’m going to lean more towards him being one of the all-time greats.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

People need to understand, Larry was the winner who made Coach Smith a winner.  Like Bill Russell started the Boston Celtics tradition, Larry Miller is the tradition that Carolina talks about.  Everything starts with him.  – Charlie Scott

And to be specific, it started in 1967.  That’s when it all came together for the Tar Heels, in Dean Smith’s sixth year.  Senior Bob Lewis, junior Miller, and sophomores Rusty Clark, Dick Grubar, and Bill Bunting led the Tar Heels to the ACC regular season championship, Smith’s first ACC Tournament championship, and the Final Four.  It was the first of three straight seasons in which the Tar Heels claimed all three of those honors, an incredible achievement that may never be matched.

Miller’s 1967 ACC Tournament was one of the best ever.  He famously scored 29 points in the second half in the semifinal against Wake Forest to lead the Tar Heels to a comeback win, then followed it up with 32 points on 13-for-14 shooting and 11 rebounds in the final to knock off Vic Bubas’ Blue Devils.  He was named a second team All-American and, on the back of his ACC Tournament performance, edged out Duke’s Bob Verga 52-48 to win ACC Player of the Year.

Miller was even better in 1968, leading the Tar Heels (who lost Lewis but added Charlie Scott) to a 28-4 record and an appearance in the national final where they fell to Lew Alcindor and UCLA.  Miller won ACC Player of the Year again, more convincingly this time, 76-34 over Duke’s Mike Lewis.  And he was named first team All-America by the Associated Press.  Look at who else was on the team:

• Lew Alcindor
• Elvin Hayes
• Pete Maravich
• Wes Unseld
• Larry Miller

Larry Miller and four NBA Hall of Famers.  Not bad.  Miller wasn’t a Hall of Famer, but did you know that he holds the ABA record for most points in a game (67), playing for the Carolina Cougars?

So when you think of the all-time greats at Carolina, think of Ford, and Jordan, and Hansbrough, yes, but also think of Larry Miller.  He’s the one who started it all.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Juan Dixon was a highly regarded recruit from Calvert Hall in Baltimore in the Class of 1997.  He enrolled at Maryland in the fall of 1997, but he didn’t make the SAT score needed to play basketball until November, by which point he had missed a couple of months of practice.  As a result, Gary Williams decided to redshirt Dixon.  Isn’t it funny how things turn out?  As a result of that redshirt, Dixon was a senior in 2002, not 2001.  If Dixon doesn’t redshirt, Maryland probably doesn’t have a national championship banner hanging up.

Dixon had about as close to a storybook career as you can get.  As mentioned, he redshirted his first year.  Then in 1999, he played only 15 minutes per game and averaged 7.4 points.  While there were signs – if you do the math, you’ll realize that 7.4 points in 15 minutes is pretty good – he hadn’t really made an impact.  He didn’t crack the ACC All-Freshman team, finishing behind such notables as UNC’s Kris Lang and NC State’s Adam Harrington.  There was no indication that he was going to be a great player.  Nowadays a guy like that would probably transfer (why must we always say “enter the transfer portal”?), but Dixon saw an opportunity with the departures of Terrell Stokes and Steve Francis.  And boy did he take advantage.  In 2000 Dixon led the Terrapins in scoring with 18 points per game and played his way right onto first team All-ACC, just ahead of teammates Lonny Baxter and Terence Morris.  Maryland finished second in the ACC and ranked 17^th nationally.

From there, Dixon just kept getting better and so did the Terrapins.  The 2001 team made a great run to Maryland’s first ever Final Four, dominating #1 seed Stanford in the regional final before losing to Duke in an All-ACC semifinal.  They returned everyone except Morris in 2002, and we know what happened.  The Terrapins went 15-1 in the ACC, Dixon won ACC Player of the Year in a very close vote over Jason Williams, and Maryland cut down the nets in Atlanta as national champions in Dixon’s final college game, with Dixon named Most Outstanding Player of the tournament.

That’s some career, isn’t it?  Five years, going from a redshirt year through continuous improvement to a National Champion / First Team All-American / ACC Player of the Year / MOP of the NCAA Tournament senior year.  I don’t think there’s anything to compare to it, really.

I previously listed Dixon’s tournament performance as one of the all-time greats. It’s right up there with Laettner 1991, Thompson 1974, May 2005, and Battier 2011.  If you said Dixon’s was the best NCAA Tournament performance ever by an ACC player, I wouldn’t argue with you.  Much.

Notable players who cut down the nets as national champions in their final game as a senior:

• Lennie Rosenbluth, 1957
• Tom Burleson, 1974
• Christian Laettner, 1992
• George Lynch, 1993
• Shane Battier, 2001
• Dixon and Lonny Baxter, 2002
• Tyler Hansbrough, 2009
• Jon Scheyer, 2010

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Grant Hill played during my late teens when I probably watched more basketball that at any other time in my life.  To me, he will always be the epitome of grace, style, and class on (and off) the basketball court, a kind of basketball version of Roger Federer.

His record, while superb, is perhaps not as good as I expected it to be.  In his freshman and sophomore years, he was excellent, but clearly played a supporting role to Laettner and Hurley.  He made second team All-ACC as a sophomore.  In 1993, Laettner was gone, and Hill stepped up from 14 PPG to 18 PPG, without giving up much in terms of shooting percentage.  That year statistically was his best – 18 points, 6.4 rebounds, 2.5 steals (3^rd in the ACC).  But the key point is that Hurley was still around, so Hill was free on the offensive end to move without the ball, find open spots, and Hurley would find him.

With Hurley gone in 1994, Hill became the primary ball handler.  His assists went up, his shooting percentage went down, and he became the focal point of opposing defenses.  In addition, he became a three-point shooter.  In his first three years, he attempted a total of 17 threes; as a senior, he went 39-for-100. 

If you just look at his statistics, you might conclude that he slipped a bit in his senior year.  But I think it’s a case where the statistics don’t tell the full story.  The fact that he became the primary ball handler, and every possession went through him, and he didn’t have Hurley dropping dimes anymore, all of that has to be considered.  In the big picture, he became the unquestioned leader of a team that, while talented, was less so than the 1991 and 1992 teams.  His teammates were Cherokee Parks, Antonio Lang, Chris Collins, Jeff Capel, and Marty Clark. He took that team to the national championship game and within a hair’s breadth of winning it all.  For his efforts, he was a First Team All-American.

Since 1993, there have been only 2 seasons in which an ACC player averaged 17+ points, 5+ assists, and 6+ rebounds: Hill in 1994, and Bob Sura in 1995.

The media have always had a minor obsession with Hill.  As an example, I have a wonderful book called the ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia, published in 2009.  In that book, a panel of 19 college basketball experts including Dick Vitale, Jay Bilas, Andy Katz, and other well-known names selected the 50 best players in the history of college basketball.  Hill was listed at number 33.  He was the seventh ACC player listed, behind David Thompson, Christian Laettner, Ralph Sampson, Michael Jordan, Tim Duncan, and Phil Ford.  Later in the book, a Top Five for each school is selected.  Hill is named to Duke’s team, along with Johnny Dawkins, Bobby Hurley, Laettner, and Art Heyman.

I love Grant Hill, but his record simply does not support those conclusions.  I honestly have no idea how anyone could conclude that Grant Hill is the seventh-best player in ACC history.  I have him as the ninth-best player – in Duke history.  He had a very fine senior year, winning ACC Player of the Year, being named first team All-American, and leading the team to the national championship game.  As a junior, he barely made first team All-ACC, edging out Sam Cassell by a few votes.  He was a second/third team All-American that year.  He was a major contributor but still a supporting player on the 1991 and 1992 championship teams. 

That’s a heckuva player, a Top 25 player, but it’s not a Top 10 player.  He wasn’t National Player of the Year and wasn’t close.  He wasn’t a two-time ACC Player of the Year and wasn’t close.  He wasn’t a two-time first team All-American and wasn’t close.  He wasn’t Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA Tournament.  He never did anything in the ACC Tournament, never making even first team All-Tournament.  He didn’t blow you away with incredible numbers.  The guys ahead of him on the list did those things.  There’s just not enough there to be considered a Top 10, or even Top 20 in my opinion, caliber-player.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

[Charlie Scott] was the first Carolina player that really would compare to today’s player. His build, his speed, his ability – you could take him out of the late 1960s and drop him into today’s game, and he wouldn’t miss a beat. – Woody Durham, quoted in North Carolina Tar Heels, Where Have You Gone? by Scott Fowler

John Roche and Charlie Scott were probably the hardest players to write about on this entire list.  Not because I couldn’t think of what to write, but it’s actually the opposite problem – there’s too much material.  Great players, great teams, great games, controversies, integration, Jim Crow, civil rights, the Frank McGuire storyline, the South-Carolina-leaving-the-ACC storyline… it’s all there.

First the basics.  Charlie Scott played from 1968-1970.  He was the first black scholarship athlete at UNC.  John Roche, who was white, played from 1969-1971.  They were the two best players in the ACC in 1969 and 1970.  In both years, Roche won close ACC Player of the Year votes over Scott, 56-39 in 1969 and 51-47 in 1970.  These votes were very controversial at the time, and in a sense, they still are.  There were accusations, credible but unprovable, that Scott was slighted in those votes because of race.

Adding spice to the whole situation is that UNC and South Carolina were the best teams in the conference (throw in NC State in 1970), so they were battling it out for conference supremacy.  South Carolina won three out of four head-to-head meetings in those two seasons. The first of those Gamecock wins was particularly memorable and seems to have had a lot to do with Roche winning that Player of the Year vote.  Roche scored 38 points to lead the Gamecocks to a 68-66 upset over the second-ranked Tar Heels.  After the game, the superlatives were flowing and the hyperbole was thick.  “I’d rather have Roche than Pete Maravich, Calvin Murphy, or any other ball player in the country,” declared Gamecock captain Bobby Cremins.  “I’ve never had an individual to give that kind of performance before,” declared the Gamecocks’ jubilant coach, Frank McGuire. – The State (Columbia, SC)

The Tar Heels won the rematch on February 25, but it seems that by then, opinions had been formed, and the memory of Roche’s legendary performance was too strongly imprinted on the voters’ minds.  Scott did not play particularly well in either game, which didn’t help.

There were no legendary performances in 1970, but the Gamecocks won both matchups on their way to an undefeated ACC regular season.  Scott again did not play particularly well in these games.

So I think all these factors played into Roche’s winning those POY votes.  In 1969, it was about his incredible performance when they played in early February.  In 1970, South Carolina was just a better team, and it was too much for Scott to overcome.

But it should also be said that we can’t reduce their careers to their head-to-head matchups, or even to the 1969 and 1970 seasons.  Scott played in 1968 without Roche, and Roche played in 1971 without Scott.  Scott was a first-team All-ACC performer on the 1968 team that advanced to the national final before losing to Lew Alcindor and UCLA.  Roche came back in 1971 with a chance to become a three-time ACC Player of the Year, something no one had accomplished at the time.  The Gamecocks had a fine season, winning their first ACC Tournament in their last year in the conference, but Roche came up short in Player of the Year voting, losing to Wake Forest’s Charlie Davis (who was black, which complicates the racial bias narrative) by a wide margin.

All-America voting is interesting.  If you look at it from a head-to-head perspective, Scott clearly did better:

Year	Scott	Roche
1969	1 – USBWA, NABC; 2 – AP, UPI	Nothing
1970	1 – USBWA, NABC; 2 – AP, UPI	2 – AP, NABC

But don’t forget, each played another year.  If you line them up by class year, the picture still favors Scott, but not by much:

Year	Scott	Roche
Sophomore	Nothing	Nothing
Junior	1 – USBWA, NABC; 2 – AP, UPI	2 – AP, NABC
Senior	1 – USBWA, NABC; 2 – AP, UPI	1 – UPI, USBWA; 2 – AP, NABC

So who was better?  It seems to be almost a settled opinion now that Scott was the better player and that those Player of the Year votes were an injustice.  While that is far from an obvious conclusion, the balance of the evidence does seem to favor that Scott was the better player and fell victim to some combination of racial bias and bad timing.  Considering their careers holistically, it’s very close.  Roche had another tremendous year after Scott was gone, but then I guess you could say that Scott had a tremendous year before Roche arrived.

Scott’s experience as the first black scholarship athlete at UNC and the first black star athlete in the ACC is a fascinating one.  Art Chansky wrote a very good short book called Game Changers, which I highly recommend if you’re interested in the subject.  It focuses not only on Scott’s experience but also Dean Smith and his leadership and influence in civil rights.  In the book, Scott comes across as a complex character, admirable but not particularly likable, highly intelligent, proud, independent, somewhat cold and distant, shaped by his childhood and obviously by the intense and unusual circumstances he experienced as the integrator of UNC basketball.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Ronnie Shavlik was part of the first class to play all three varsity years in the ACC.  He was a year behind Dickie Hemric, and Shavlik and Hemric were similar in many ways.  Shavlik finished second to Hemric in 1955 for ACC Player of the Year, and in 1956 with Hemric out of the way Shavlik won it easily.  Shavlik was also the Most Outstanding Player of the 1955 ACC Tournament.

Shavlik was a graceful big man who could run the floor and had a nose for getting rebounds. He still holds all kinds of rebounding records, including a probably unbreakable ACC season record of 581 rebounds in 1955.

I give Shavlik a slight edge over Hemric, only because he did a little better in All-America voting.  He made second team in 1955 and barely missed first team in 1956, finishing sixth in both AP and UPI voting.

NC State was one of the best teams in the country in 1955 and 1956.  In 1955, they went 28-4, won the ACC Tournament, and were ranked fourth in the country, but the Wolfpack was ineligible for the NCAA Tournament due to recruiting violations.  In 1956, they were 24-3 and ranked second in the country going into the NCAA Tournament but were upset by Canisius in a thrilling four-overtime first round game.  So for those two great years, Shavlik and the Wolfpack had exactly zero NCAA Tournament wins to show for it.  The Wolfpack would not play another NCAA Tournament game under Everett Case; their next appearance was in 1965, the year that Case gave way to Press Maravich after two games.

Shavlik is, so far as I can ascertain, the only notable ACC player from Colorado. He gained national attention, including that of NC State assistant Vic Bubas, by playing well in the national AAU Tournament in Denver in 1952.

Notable players to win three straight ACC Tournaments:

• Shavlik and Vic Molodet – NC State, 1954-56
• Bill Bunting, Rusty Clark, Dick Grubar – UNC, 1967-1969
• Shane Battier, Nate James – Duke, 1999-01
• Jason Williams, Mike Dunleavy, Carlos Boozer – Duke, 2000-02
• Chris Duhon – Duke, 2001-2003
• Nolan Smith, Kyle Singler – Duke, 2009-2011

Two role players for Duke, Casey Sanders and Andre Buckner, are the only two players in league history to win four straight from 2000 to 2003.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

ACC Legends H-O-R-S-E competition: who you taking?

JJ Redick, Dennis Scott, Rodney Monroe? Maybe Christian Laettner just because he wins everything? If you’re looking for a dark horse pick, how about Charlie Davis or Bob Verga or Jack McClinton? Hubert Davis, anyone?

I’m taking Mark Price. Quite simply, one of the best shooters to ever lace ‘em up. One of only three players in NBA history to shoot 90% from the free throw line (Curry and Nash) for his career. Over 40% from three and over 50% from two. If you’re too young to remember Price, think of him as Steve Nash with a shorter career. Price’s good seasons would fit right into Nash’s playing record and you wouldn’t know the difference. But he was finished as a great player at 29 whereas Nash was just getting started.

In evaluating Price, you can’t avoid thinking about Johnny Dawkins.  Their careers were parallel in a lot of ways.  Both were combo guards who played from 1983-1986, and both were cornerstones of great program building jobs.  Here is how their respective teams fared over those years:

Year	Duke	Georgia Tech
1982 (year before arrival)	10-17, 4-10	10-16, 3-11
1983 (freshman)	11-17, 3-11	13-15, 4-10
1984 (sophomore)	24-10, 7-7	18-11, 6-8
1985 (junior)	23-8, 8-6	27-8, 9-5
1986 (senior)	37-3, 12-2	27-7, 11-3

Dawkins is generally regarded as a better player than Price, and that is what I would like to explore, because from looking at their playing records, that is not an obvious conclusion.  We will look at several dimensions:

• How they did locally in All-ACC voting
• Tournament performance
• How they did nationally in All-America voting

You might guess that we are coming to a familiar theme here, and that is the disparity between ACC voting and national voting.  From the perspective of ACC voting alone, Price is the equal of Dawkins, in fact I would argue slightly better.  Here is how they did in All-ACC voting:

• 1983: Price finished 9^th with 149 points, Dawkins finished 10^th with 117 points.  Price also won ACC Rookie of the Year with 83 votes to Dawkins’ 53.  Advantage: Price
• 1984: Price finished 5^th with 177 points; Dawkins finished 7^th with 157 points.  Advantage: Price
• 1985: Price finished 3^rd with 223 points; Dawkins finished 4^th with 199 points.  Advantage: Price
• 1986: Dawkins finished 3^rd with 243 points; Price finished 4^th with 236 points.  Dawkins received 40 votes for ACC Player of the Year, Price received 5.  Advantage: Dawkins

All-ACC: advantage Price.

Then there’s the ACC Tournament:

• 1984: Dawkins 1^st team all-tournament, Price 2^nd team all-tournament.  Advantage: Dawkins
• 1985: Dawkins and Price both 1^st team all-tournament; Price MOP.  Advantage: Price
• 1986: Dawkins 1^st team all-tournament, Price 2^nd team all-tournament, Dawkins MOP.  Advantage: Dawkins

ACC Tournament: advantage Dawkins.

So if you look at the whole picture with All-ACC and All-ACC Tournament, I just don’t see anything in that record that would support Dawkins being better than Price.  It’s at best a draw for Dawkins, and if I had to pick a winner, it would be Price.

Then there’s the 1986 NCAA Tournament.  Dawkins had an amazing tournament.  He was MOP of the East Region, and there is no question but that he would have been MOP of the tournament had Duke won the final.  Here is his game by game shooting/scoring:

• First Round: 27 points on 11-for-17
• Second Round: 25 points on 10-for-12
• Regional Semifinal: 25 points on 11-for-20
• Regional Final: 28 points on 13-for-25
• National Semifinal: 24 points on 11-for-17
• National Final: 24 points on 10-for-19

That would be remembered as one of the all-time great NCAA tournaments if Duke had won the title.

So maybe we give Dawkins an ever-so-slight edge overall based on that NCAA Tournament performance.  It’s arguable.  I still think they’re about even.

But when it comes to All-America voting, Dawkins clearly did better than Price.  To break it down,

• 1984: Price: 3-UPI; Dawkins: nothing
• 1985: Price: 2-AP, NABC; Dawkins: 1-NABC,UPI; 2-AP
• 1986: Price: 2-NABC; 3-AP, UPI; Dawkins: 1-AP, NABC, UPI, USBWA

Let’s acknowledge that Dawkins was just better in 1986.  The ACC voters agreed with that.  So that really leaves 1985 as the anomaly.

I’m probably spending too much time on this, but hopefully you get the point.  Whether Dawkins or Price was better is not at all obvious, and the decision requires close parsing of a lot of data points.  I do think the balance of the evidence is in favor of Dawkins, but it’s awfully close, and Price has an argument.

One thing that I think hurt Price nationally is that his scoring average dropped by almost five points from his freshman year to his sophomore year.  On the surface, that sounds like regression, but if you look closer, that wasn’t the case at all.  There were two factors:

1. Price got some help, in the form of Bruce Dalrymple and Yvon Joseph, so he started shooting less and passing more.
2. His freshman year had the three-point line, and then they took it away.  Price was a great 3-point shooter.  He lost 2-3 points per game just from the line going away.

Price’s efficiency actually went up as a sophomore.  He went from being a 43.5% shooter to a 51% shooter.  He was probably a better player overall.  But unless you’re watching him every day, like the ACC voters were, you might miss those nuances and conclude that he took a step back.

One more point on Price.  When Price was named ACC Rookie of the Year in 1983, he was the first of eight Yellow Jackets to win that honor over the 14-year span from 1983 to 1996 (full list below).  Bobby Cremins knew how to recruit freshmen who were ready to play in the ACC, and he had no qualms about putting them on the floor.

• 1983 – Mark Price
• 1984 – Bruce Dalrymple
• 1985 – Duane Ferrell
• 1986 – Tom Hammonds
• 1988 – Dennis Scott
• 1990 – Kenny Anderson
• 1993 – Martice Moore
• 1996 – Stephon Marbury

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Joe Smith was the greatest two-year player in ACC history.  I don’t mean only that he is the best two-and-done player, though he is that.  I mean that if you look at just the freshman and sophomore years of all players in ACC history, Joe Smith is the best ever.

Now of course that’s not fair to players who weren’t freshman-eligible.  David Thompson, for one, might have something to say about that had he been eligible as a freshman.  But among players who played as freshmen and sophomores, I’d pick Smith as the best.  Smith was National Player of the Year as a sophomore, which places him in some seriously rarified air.  The only other ACC players to do that are Ralph Sampson and Elton Brand.  But Smith was better as a freshman than either.

When Smith showed up on campus, the Maryland program was way down.  In the seven long years since Lefty Driesell had departed, the Terrapins had compiled a 25-70 ACC record.  Gary Williams, in his fifth season, was coming off a 12-16, 2-14 year, and was under some pressure to win.  That 12-16 year concealed some potential in the form of freshmen Johnny Rhodes, Exree Hipp, and Duane Simpkins.  When Smith and Keith Booth showed up in 1994, the effect was immediate and electric.  In the first game of the year, the Terrapins went into the Capital Centre and beat 15^th-ranked Georgetown behind 26 from Smith.  Maryland went on to make an unexpected run to the Sweet 16 as a 10 seed, upsetting John Calipari, Marcus Camby and UMass along the way.

I’ve previously written about the 1995 season under the Jerry Stackhouse and Randolph Childress entries, so I won’t go on about that here.  Suffice it to say that Smith was the best player in arguably the best season in ACC history.  Everybody remembers the Randolph Childress show in the epic ACC Tournament final, but not as many people remember the epic semifinal battle between Carolina and Maryland, which the Tar Heels won 97-92 in overtime.  Smith and Rasheed Wallace went it at, and Wallace got the better of him with probably the game of his life – 33 points, 6 rebounds, 5 blocks.  Maryland advanced to the Sweet 16 again before losing to eighth-ranked UConn in Smith’s final college game.