Month: June 2022

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

I feel like I have Ferry a little bit overrated here, but dang, the résumé is just too impressive.  He was a two-time ACC Player of the Year, and the votes were not close.  As a senior, Ferry and Arizona’s Sean Elliott split the national Player of the Year awards, with Ferry snagging the UPI/Naismith and the USBWA, and Elliott getting the others.  He played on three Final Four teams.  In both his junior and senior years, Duke was a #2 seed and beat a #1 seed to make the Final Four.  Ferry was Most Outstanding Player of the East region both times.  He was ACC Tournament Most Outstanding Player as a junior.  He is the only player in ACC history with 2,000 points, 500 assists, and 1,000 rebounds.

The other thing he has going for him is, if you look back at those late 1980s Duke teams, he wasn’t surrounded by overwhelming talent.  These were not the Duke teams of the early 90s, or the late 90s/early 00s.  This was the Duke of Kevin Strickland, Robert Brickey, Quin Snyder, and Phil Henderson.  Those guys were good players, but it was Ferry’s team, and he got them to the Final Four, twice in a row.

The one thing I guess you could say against him is, his competition for ACC Player of the Year was a little weak in Tom Hammonds and JR Reid.  Had he come along a little earlier, he would’ve had to deal with Johnny Dawkins and Horace Grant.  Had he come along a little later, he would’ve had to deal with Dennis Scott and Kenny Anderson.  Maybe he wouldn’t have won those two ACC POY awards.  But that’s not his fault; he could only play against the guys who were in the league at that time.  Hammonds and Reid are both Top 100 players and he was way ahead of them.

My gut says Ferry should be down in the 20-25 range, but the more I look at his accomplishments, I can’t justify it.  The bottom line is, he accomplished more than the guys he’s ahead of.  He had one of the great careers in the history of the ACC.

Ferry’s 58-point outburst against Miami in 1988 still stands as the record for points in a game by an ACC player. What I didn’t know until recently is that Ferry hit 19 straight shots in the game, which would be an NCAA record – except it was interrupted by an errant alley oop attempt that hit the rim and was counted as a missed shot.

I’d like to be one of their other four guys. Everybody is trying to guard Ferry. By the time you think you’ve got him stopped, he lays it off to somebody else. If he ain’t the player of the year, I want to see who is. – Miami coach Bill Foster, quoted in Game of My Life by Alwyn Featherston

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

I think there is a good argument that Coach K’s 1982 recruiting class of Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson, and Jay Bilas is the best class in ACC history.  Here is what they accomplished:

Year 1: 11-17 (3-11)

Year 2: 24-10 (7-7), ACC Tournament finals, lost in first round of NCAA

Year 3: 23-8 (8-6), ACC Tournament semifinals, lost in second round of NCAA

Year 4: 37-3 (12-2), ACC Tournament champs, lost in national championship

While there are classes that might have more in the way of accomplishments, I think three things set this class apart:

1. Where they started vs. where they finished.  They took the program from the bottom to the top in 3 years.
2. All four guys played for all four years.
3. It really was those four guys who got it done.  OK, Amaker contributed, throw in a little Dan Meagher and Danny Ferry, but the backbone of that 1986 team was those same four guys.

This would be unthinkable now.  Can you imagine four guys playing together for four years and elevating a program like this?  It would never happen.  Can you imagine how much Duke fans must have loved these four?  It shows you what college basketball has lost with all the roster turnover that happens nowadays.

What are some of the other best recruiting classes in terms of their accomplishments?  Here are some that come to mind.

• Duke 1997 (Brand, Battier, Avery)
• Duke 1999 (Williams, Dunleavy, Boozer)
• Duke 2002 (Redick, Williams)
• Duke 2007 (Singler, Smith, Scheyer)
• Maryland 1971 (McMillen, Elmore)
• UNC 1958 (Larese, Moe)
• UNC 1993 (Stackhouse, Wallace)
• UNC 1995 (Jamison, Carter)
• NC State 1953 (Shavlik, Molodet)
• NC State 1956 (Pucillo, Richter)
• NC State 1987 (Corchiani, Monroe)
• South Carolina 1968 (Roche, Owens)
• Wake Forest 1990 (Childress, Rogers)

I don’t think any of those can match the 1982 Duke class in terms of taking a program from the bottom to the top.

Now, back to Johnny Dawkins.  Johnny Dawkins, to me, is the epitome of all-around excellence in a basketball player.  From the day he stepped on the court, he did everything with excellence.  Excellent shooter.  Excellent passer.  Excellent defender.  Good rebounder at the guard position.  Good perimeter shooter, good penetrator, good finisher.  Made free throws.  Great leader.  Fine human being.  All-ACC.  All-American.  National Player of the Year, according to some.  ACC Tournament MOP.

All he lacks on his resume is a national championship and ACC Player of the Year.  For the first, he came up 3 points short.  For the second, he couldn’t overcome the greatness of Len Bias.  But there is nothing negative to say about Johnny Dawkins, as a ballplayer or as a person.

Have you ever looked at how great he was in the 1986 postseason?  In nine games – three in the ACC Tournament, six in the NCAA Tournament, all wins except the last – here’s what he did:

Game	Opponent	Result	Shooting	Points
ACC Quarters	Wake Forest	W, 68-60	8-14	16
ACC Semis	Virginia	W, 75-70	9-17	24
ACC Final	Georgia Tech	W, 68-67	7-14	20
NCAA First Round	Miss. Valley State	W, 85-78	11-17	27
NCAA Second Round	Old Dominion	W, 89-61	10-12	25
NCAA Sweet 16	DePaul	W, 74-67	11-20	25
NCAA Elite 8	Navy	W, 71-50	13-25	28
NCAA Final Four	Kansas	W, 71-67	11-17	24
NCAA Champ Game	Louisville	L, 72-69	10-19	24
Averages	59.4%	23.7

To have eight consecutive games with 20+ points and 50%+ shooting, in tournament play, as a guard… it would be hard to find another example.  This performance is right up there with the greatest NCAA Tournament performances in history.  It’s not remembered as such, simply because they didn’t win.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

I did not expect to find that Shane Battier was a Top 15 player.  But as I look at his accomplishments, I am forced to that conclusion.  His senior year in 2001 is one of the great years anybody ever had.  He was ACC Player of the Year, National Player of the Year, NABC Defensive Player of the Year, ACC Tournament Most Outstanding Player, NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player, and won a national championship.  I’d say that about covers it…

But that’s not all.  He was also NABC Defensive Player of the Year and a second team All-American as a junior.  The teams he played on had an overall record of 135-15, 59-5 in the ACC.  His teams went 11-1 in the ACC Tournament.  He is the only player in ACC history with 200 blocks and 200 steals.  His 2001 NCAA Tournament performance is one of the greatest ever by an ACC player.

One of the reasons for lingering doubts about Battier’s greatness is that, as I remember, he was considered a bit of a disappointment as a freshman and sophomore.  He came in as a very hyped recruit, and while he played an important role on those 1998 and 1999 teams, he clearly played a supporting role to Trajan Langdon and Elton Brand.  He was always a tremendous defender, but he wasn’t a prolific scorer, so there was a sense of “what’s with all the hype about this guy?”.  But with the departures of Brand, Langdon, Will Avery, and Corey Maggette after 1999, Battier showed that he could score, in addition to everything else he did well, and that 2000 team didn’t miss a beat.

Battier, Jason Williams, and Joseph Forte were the top three vote-getters on the 2001 AP All-America team.  As far as I can tell, that is the only time in the history of that award that the top three were from the same conference.

Battier is probably the only player in college basketball history to play in four NCAA tournaments as a #1 seed.  I can’t find another.  Gonzaga would have been a #1 in four straight tournaments had it not been for the 2020 COVID cancellation.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Sam Perkins is probably the best player in the history of college basketball who was never the best player on his own team.  He was overshadowed by James Worthy and Michael Jordan, but he was a great player in his own right – First Team All-ACC three times, Consensus First Team All-American twice.  Perkins never came close to winning ACC Player of the Year, as he had the misfortune to play at the same time as Jordan and Ralph Sampson.

Perkins in 1982 and 1983 fell victim to the anti-ACC bias shown by the AP that I have written about elsewhere.  Notice how the AP is out of step with the other services:

Vote	1982	1983	1984
AP	Nothing	3rd team	1st team
USBWA	2nd team	1st team	1st team
NABC	2nd team	2nd team	2nd team
UPI	2nd team	1st team	1st team
Consensus	2nd team	1st team	1st team

Freshmen to be named Most Outstanding Player of the ACC Tournament:

• Phil Ford, UNC, 1975
• Sam Perkins, UNC, 1981
• Jerry Stackhouse, UNC, 1994
• Jason Williams, Duke, 2000
• Brandan Wright, UNC, 2007
• Zion Williamson, Duke, 2019

Perkins was a forerunner of the modern European-style big man with great perimeter shooting touch.  He was one of the first big guys to be a proficient 3-point shooter at the NBA level.  He is the only player in ACC history with 2000 points, 1000 rebounds, 200 blocks, and 100 steals.

My friend Todd thinks that Perkins shouldn’t be ahead of Lennie Rosenbluth and Larry Miller.  It’s certainly arguable either way, but there are two main reasons I put Perkins ahead, and I’ve already mentioned them.  One is, he was a three-time All-American.  If you want to devalue that because he didn’t do as well in AP voting, OK, but I go the other way, for reasons I’ve already explained.

The other reason is, Perkins played at the same time as Sampson and Jordan.  So that pretty much eliminated any chance to be the best player in the conference.  That’s a unique set of circumstances.  No other player on this list is blocked behind two Top 10 players.  With all due respect to Larry Miller, he was competing with Bob Verga and Mike Lewis for ACC honors.  Rosenbluth’s main competition was Grady Wallace. It’s not the same.  Think about it this way: if Miller or Rosenbluth had played when Perkins did, what more do you think they would have accomplished than Perkins did?  Would they have won ACC Player of the Year over Sampson and Jordan?  Would they have done better than Perkins did in All-America or All-ACC voting?  I don’t think so.

It is true that Perkins never had that signature moment.  He was ACC Tournament MOP as a freshman, but it’s not like he scored 40 points or made a game-winning shot.  He was just his normal efficient, excellent self for three games.  That was the pattern of his entire career: quiet, efficient excellence for 135 games.  There’s a reason his teams went 117-21 and made it to two national finals.  Obviously, Worthy and Jordan had a lot to do with that, but Perkins was the constant.  Miller and Rosenbluth had brighter moments than Perkins, but if you look at the overall body of work… I just think Perkins is a little bit better.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Coming into the 1996 season, Carolina had a lot of question marks.  Jerry Stackhouse, Rasheed Wallace, and Donald Williams were gone from the 1995 Final Four team.  Jeff McInnis and Dante Calabria were the only returning starters.  Shammond Williams and Serge Zwikker hadn’t shown much.  But as usual, Dean Smith had a stellar recruiting class of Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, and Ademola Okulaja.  Carter was most highly touted of the group, making all the prep All-America teams.  But once the season started, it became apparent that Jamison was the star.

He played his way onto first team All-ACC as a freshman, one point ahead of Maryland’s Johnny Rhodes.  At the time, he was just the fourth freshman to receive that honor, the first three being Clemson’s Skip Wise, Georgia Tech’s Kenny Anderson, and Maryland’s Joe Smith.  But he didn’t stop there.  Jamison continued to expand his game, improving his free throw shooting, developing more of a perimeter game, and increasing his scoring totals.  By 1998, he was the best player in the country, making Bill Guthridge look like a genius and leading the Tar Heels to their second straight Final Four.  (ACC teams that won the ACC Tournament and made the Final Four in back-to-back years: 1963-64 Duke; 1967-68-69 UNC; 1981-82 UNC; 1997-98 UNC)

The first thing you noticed about Jamison was his unorthodox style.  He bounced around like a pogo stick out there, flipping up shots from all sorts of angles, but it seemed that all of them went in.  He was half a step and half a jump quicker than everybody else. He once scored 35 points against Duke and had the ball in his hands for a total of 53 seconds. He made himself into a shooter, progressing from a 53% free-throw shooter as a freshman to one of the top 100 three-point shooters in NBA history in terms of three-point FGs made.

Jamison as a collegian has a very similar career profile to Jason Williams.  Both three-year players; both were National Player of the Year as a junior.  Jamison I think was a little better as a freshman.  I guess you could argue that Williams was a little better as a sophomore; he was a first team All-American while Jamison was second team.  Ultimately, it’s a coin flip.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player who has the sense of presence on the court that Antawn has. His feel, his sixth sense – all of that is unprecedented. You could almost spin him like a top, blindfold him, and throw him the ball. He could shoot without looking, and it would go in. – Dave Odom, quoted in What It Means to Be a Tar Heel by Scott Fowler

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

McGuire didn’t do a lot of Xs and Os. We didn’t run plays. We just played schoolyard basketball. – Rosenbluth in What It Means to Be a Tar Heel

With apologies to Dickie Hemric and Ronnie Shavlik, Lennie Rosenbluth was the best ACC player of the 1950s.  He was the first three-time All-ACC player.  He was the first ACC player to be named first team All-America.  And of course he had that magical 1957 season where he was ACC Player of the Year, ACC Tournament Most Outstanding Player, and led the Tar Heels to the national championship.

Rosenbluth’s ACC Tournament performance that year is worth dwelling on.  In the Tar Heels’ three victories, he had 45, 23, and 38 points, for a total of 106.  That record stood until 1995 when Randolph Childress got 107.  His 45 points in the first round is still the single-game tournament scoring record.  His 38 points in the final was surpassed only by Charlie Scott’s 40 in 1969.  Rosenbluth’s performance was every bit as good in its time as Childress’ was in his.

There are a lot of national player of the year awards now, but in 1957, there were only two that I can find: the UPI and the Helms Foundation.  The UPI Player of the Year Award went to Chet Forte of Columbia, while the Helms Foundation award went to Rosenbluth.  Had the AP had an award, it seems likely based on All-America voting that it would have gone to Wilt Chamberlain.  All that to say, Chamberlain, Rosenbluth, and Forte were the three best players in the country.

If “Helms Foundation” sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen it on a banner hanging up in the Dean Dome.  I never took the time to investigate what kind of organization it is or was until now.  Here’s an interesting article.  The gist of it seems to be that the Helms “Foundation” selections were essentially the product of one person who was a big sports fan.  The selections from the earliest years such as North Carolina’s mythical 1924 “national championship” were done retroactively, as the Helms Foundation wasn’t founded until 1936.  So I think it casts some doubt on the credibility of these selections.

Would Rosenbluth be on Carolina’s all-time starting five?  Boy, that is a tough one.  The guards are easy (Ford and Jordan) and the center is easy (Hansbrough).  But the forwards?  Pick two from this list: Rosenbluth, Larry Miller, Sam Perkins, and Antawn Jamison.  If you pin me down, I’m probably going with Perkins and Rosenbluth.  When Billy Cunningham and James Worthy can’t crack your school’s second team all-time starting five, you know you’re an elite program.

From the first NCAA Tournament in 1939 through 1976, there were seven national championship teams who went undefeated: San Francisco in 1956; UNC in 1957; UCLA in 1964, 1967, 1972, and 1973; and Indiana in 1976.  It has not happened since then.  In fact, there hasn’t even been a one loss national champion.  There is no obvious (to me) reason why this should be the case.  Of course, it is very, very difficult to go undefeated, so perhaps we should turn the question around and ask how it happened seven times during that 38-year period?  Four of those teams were UCLA teams, and that 10-year period for UCLA is something unique in the history of college basketball, and seemingly not repeatable.  But even if we dismiss that as an outlier, we still have the other three.  Teams do play more games now, so that by itself decreases the chances of an undefeated season, but it’s not that big of a difference.  My guess is that what looks like a pattern is mostly due to chance.  There is no reason that a modern team couldn’t go undefeated the way that Indiana did in 1976 or UNC did in 1957.  1984 Georgetown, 1992 Duke, and 2012 Kentucky could have gone undefeated had the balls bounced a little differently.  I predict that within the next 20 years, we’ll see another undefeated team in college basketball.