Month: July 2022

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Christian Laettner. For me personally, I don’t think there’s any ACC player who conjures up as many powerful memories. His time at Duke corresponded exactly with my high school years, the time when my interest in ACC basketball was at its highest. For me he was a kind of basketball version of Ric Flair – the villain you love to hate. For whatever reason, what sticks out to me most with Laettner, besides the Kentucky shot I guess, is how he suddenly started shooting threes as a senior – and proceeded to knock down 56% of them. That season still ranks 13th all-time in NCAA Division I for three-point shooting percentage. He seems like the kind of guy who could pick up a bowling ball for the first time and roll a 300. He made everything look easy.

Any consideration of Laettner’s greatness has to deal with the question of how much weight to put on his NCAA Tournament performance.  Laettner is right up there with Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, Lew Alcindor, and Bill Walton as the greatest March Madness performers ever.  He played in four Final Fours and three championship games, winning two.  His overall record in NCAA Tournament play was 21-2.  He is the tournament’s all-time leading scorer.  He was Most Outstanding Player of his region twice, and of the tournament once.  He won two tournament games on buzzer beaters.  He had the famous “perfect game” against Kentucky when he went 10-for-10 from the field and 10-for-10 from the line.  He had an incredible individual performance in 1991, leading the Blue Devils to a Final Four win over UNLV who had manhandled them the year before.  For his career, he shot over 60% from the field and 85% from the line in the NCAA Tournament.  I could go on.

One way I thought of looking at it is this.  Let’s pretend for a moment that Laettner had never played in the NCAA Tournament.  Where would he rank then?  My thinking is, he’d be somewhere in the mid-teens, maybe in the Johnny Dawkins/Danny Ferry range.  He was ACC and national player of the year as a senior, so that obviously counts for a lot.  As a junior, though, he was “only” second team All-America, and he didn’t win ACC POY either as that went to Rodney Monroe.  As a sophomore, he finished seventh in All-ACC voting, landing on second team.  It’s a pretty similar record to a Bias, Ferry, or Dawkins. Of course, one could argue that he was national player of the year precisely because of his NCAA Tournament performance – that his reputation was bolstered so much by his tournament exploits in 1990 and 1991 that it carried over into the voting in 1992.

So how much extra credit does he get for being the greatest NCAA Tournament performer of all time?  Well, a lot.  I started out with him fourth, behind Thompson, Sampson, and Duncan.  I still think in my heart of hearts that Duncan was better, but… there’s just too much there.  I have to put Laettner ahead.  Now I’m asking myself if he should be ahead of Sampson. I guess that’s going too far; Sampson wasn’t bad in the tournament, and he wasn’t playing with Bobby Hurley either.

Here’s a fun stat.  Laettner played in four regional finals.  Those are pretty big games, right?  I mean aside from winning the championship, making the Final Four is the most impactful and meaningful and memorable thing that a college basketball team can accomplish.  Well, in those four games, Laettner averaged 24.3 points on 91% from the field and 92% from the line, and won two of the games with buzzer beaters.  That’s not a typo – 91% from the field in those four games.

Laettner’s NCAA Tournament records of 23 games played and 407 total points seem unbreakable. 23 games is almost literally unbreakable; 24 games is the maximum possible over four years (excepting the dreaded play-in games) unless the tournament expands. And anyone good enough to score 407 points would never stay four years now. So I think Laettner’s record will stand forever.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Tim Duncan is probably the greatest defensive player in ACC history.  Him or Ralph Sampson, I guess.  Duncan, Sampson, Tree Rollins, and Shelden Williams, in that order, rank 1-2-3-5 in career blocks and 2-3-4-5 in career rebounds.

We associate Duncan with Randolph Childress, but they overlapped for only two seasons in 1994 and 1995.  1995 was the year for them to do something special if they were going to, and with their ACC Tournament performance, I suppose you could say they did.  I remember their loss to Oklahoma State in the Sweet 16 and how surprised I was.  But looking back, I shouldn’t have been that surprised.  Wake had Childress and Duncan, which is a lot, but not much else.  Tony Rutland, Ricky Peral, Jerry Braswell, Rusty LaRue, and Scooter Banks.  Rutland and Banks were okay I guess, but that’s not a lot of talent.  And they got a bit unlucky in their tournament draw; Oklahoma State was an underseeded #4.  According to the Simple Rating System on sports-reference.com, the Cowboys were the seventh-best team in the country.  I think I was just disappointed when Wake lost because I really enjoyed watching that team play.

What strikes me about Duncan’s record is how good the Deacs were in 1996 and 1997 considering the weak talent surrounding him.  Wake went 11-5 and 12-4 in the ACC and finished 9^th in the AP poll both years.  Without Duncan, that’s a lower division ACC team.  I’m trying to think of another instance where one player elevated a team that much.  Len Bias, as great as he was, wasn’t able to lift his teams to the Top 10.  In 1998, without Duncan, the Deacs dropped from 24-7/11-5 to 16-14/7-9.  I think that’s about right; Duncan was worth 8 extra wins by himself. Duncan was first team All-America and ACC Player of the Year both years, and was consensus National Player of the Year as a senior.

Duncan’s 1997 rebounds per game average of 14.74 had not been equaled since in NCAA Division I – until Kentucky’s Oscar Tshiebwe pulled down 15.2 in 2022.

In the past 35 years, roughly corresponding to the Mike Krzyzewski era at Duke but leaving out his first few years when they weren’t very good, here are the best records I could find against Coach K’s Duke teams:

• Tim Duncan, 8-1 against Duke in his career (1994-1997)
• Randoph Childress, 7-2 against Duke in his career (1991, 1993-1995)
• Jeff McInnis, 6-0 against Duke in his career (1994-1996)
• Tyler Hansbrough/Danny Green, 6-2 against Duke in their career (2006-2009)
• Honorable mention, Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace, 4-0 against Duke in their career (1994-1995)

Duncan, Hansbrough/Green, and McInnis never lost at Cameron.  So far as I can tell, they are the only players of significance in this era who can say that (not counting Stackhouse and Wallace who played only two games).  Notice that most of these good records happened during the mid-1990s lean years, the forgettable era between the Laettner/Hurley/Grant Hill teams and the Battier/Brand teams.  These were the Blue Devils of Chris Collins, Jeff Capel, Greg Newton, Ricky Price, Steve Wojciechowski, and, of course, Pete Gaudet. 

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Phil Ford was the quintessential Carolina basketball player. It’s hard to put into words what I mean by that, but perhaps those of you who watched him will understand. He was Dean Smith Carolina basketball personified. He knew instinctively what Dean wanted and, because a) he was so good and b) he always had the ball in his hands, he just made it happen. It is difficult to do justice to the skill and even artistry with which he orchestrated the action on the floor. His mastery of the Four Corners and the sense of dread and futility it created among opposing teams is one of the enduring narratives of ACC basketball history, as is his tour de force performance in the 1975 ACC Tournament, in which the Tar Heels finally stopped the irresistible force that was David Thompson. I’ve often thought that if time of possession by a player were a statistic in basketball, then Ford would be the all-time leader. Phil Ford, the point guard par excellence.

But while he is the quintessential Carolina player, is he the best player?  I have no data to support this, but it seems like the prevailing opinion is that he is.  Influencing that opinion is a reaction against the thoughtless invocation of Michael Jordan as the greatest by casual fans who haven’t considered the question carefully and are conflating Jordan’s NBA career with his college career.  The question is further complicated by Tyler Hansbrough and Lennie Rosenbluth who have cases of their own.  But I’ve already staked out my position with regard to Hansbrough and Rosenbluth, and I’m sticking to it.

But as great as Ford was, I think Michael Jordan was better.  It almost seems impossible, but Jordan is now actually underrated as a college player.  The pendulum has swung too far and we have lost sight of how great he actually was in college.

In many ways, this debate comes down to career value vs. peak value.  Had Jordan played a fourth year, it would be easy; Jordan would be regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of college basketball and the debate would be about whether he is #1 on this list or #2.  But he didn’t.  Ford played four years, and Jordan played three.  Ford is on all kinds of all-time leaderboards, and Jordan isn’t.  Ford made All-America three times, Jordan “only” twice. 

But there are two things for me that put Jordan over the top.  One, he had two years that in my opinion were better than Ford’s best year.  Jordan in 1984 was National Player of the Year, and it wasn’t close.  He dominated the voting over some great players – Wayman Tisdale, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin, and teammate Sam Perkins.  Ford’s best year was his senior year of 1978.  He won the Wooden Award in a very close vote over Marquette’s Butch Lee, but Lee won the AP and UPI Awards by a healthy margin.  Ford in fact finished third in the UPI balloting behind Lee and Larry Bird.  The data suggest that Ford and Lee were regarded as the two best players in the country in a very close competition, with a slight edge perhaps going to Lee.  So when we compare Jordan 1984 to Ford 1978, advantage Jordan.

But what about Jordan’s 1983?  If you look at the voting totals, it’s clear that Jordan was regarded as the second-best player in the country to Ralph Sampson.  In every award for which we have voting totals – AP Player of the Year, UPI Player of the Year, Wooden Award, UPI All-America – Jordan finished second to Sampson.  Jordan (61 votes) darn near won the ACC Player of the Year over Sampson (75 votes).  Folks, we’re talking Ralph Sampson here.  The senior year of one of the greatest players in the history of college basketball.  In context, I think Jordan’s 1983 year was just as impressive, if not better, than Ford’s best year of 1978.  Finishing second to Ralph Sampson is more impressive than finishing in a tie with Butch Lee.

The second factor in Jordan’s favor is this.  Ford did better nationally than he did with ACC voters, and I can’t shake the sense that there is a little bit of the Bobby Hurley/Kenny Smith effect going on here.  In other words, highly publicized point guards of blue blood programs who are fawned over by national writers, but whom ACC voters see for who they are.  Ford was ACC Player of the Year as a senior, and by a wide margin.  But as a junior, he finished a distant second to Rod Griffin.  So if we match them up, both Jordan and Ford had a year where they ran away with ACC POY.  But in their second-best years, Jordan finished a close second to one of the all-time greats in college basketball; Ford finished a distant second to Rod Griffin. 

Now I do have to point out that Ford was a much better ACC Tournament performer than Jordan.  Jordan was first team All-Tournament only once; Ford made it three times and was Most Outstanding Player as a freshman, when he led the Tar Heels to an electrifying win in the final over David Thompson and NC State.

NCAA Tournament performance?  I’d call it a wash.  I think you’d have to say that both players, on the whole, were a little bit disappointing in that regard, in spite of Jordan’s iconic moment in 1982.  Ford’s 1977 team made a run to the national final. He had a mix of good and bad games.  The other teams he played on did nothing in the tournament.  Jordan’s last two teams both disappointed in the tournament.  The 1984 loss to Indiana in the Sweet 16 ranks as one of the all-time disappointing endings for any team, anywhere.  Jordan famously fouled out of that game and finished his college career sitting on the bench.

It really comes down to the fact that I think Jordan’s best was better than Ford’s best, and I don’t think Ford’s extra year and ACC Tournament performance is enough to make up for that.  I can’t quite get past Ford’s performance in ACC POY voting.  If you’re one of the five best players in ACC history, you should not be losing 89-31 to Rod Griffin, with all due respect to Griffin, whom I recognize as a historically underrated player.

Few players have fallen as far, as fast, as Ford.  He was NBA Rookie of the Year and second-team All-NBA in 1979.  Ford and Otis Birdsong appeared to give the Kansas City Kings a young backcourt they could build around.  Ford continued to play at a very high level in his second and third years.  In his last 24 games in 1981, Ford averaged 24 points and 9 assists on 53% from the field and 85% from the line.  He was at the height of his powers.  Then, on February 22, 1981, he was inadvertently poked in the eye by World B. Free.  Expected to return quickly, Ford was unable to shake the double vision that he was experiencing, and he missed the rest of the season – a season that saw the Kings, without Ford, make an unexpected run to the Western Conference finals.

And, in short, Ford was never a good player again.  He returned to the Kings the next season, but he wasn’t the same player.  Alcoholism certainly played a role, and maybe that was the sole cause; I haven’t been able to find a detailed account of what happened.  In any case, within a few years, he was out of the league.

2003 Top 50 List: Not eligible

Dan Collins List: Yes

There is a credible argument that Tyler Hansbrough is the greatest player in ACC history.  Let’s see… the only player in ACC history to make first team All-ACC four times; the ACC’s all-time leading scorer; one of only two players (the other is Mike Gminski) in the Top 10 in ACC career scoring and rebounding; three-time Consensus first team All-American; only player in ACC history to make first or second team All-American four times; ACC Player of the Year; ACC Tournament Most Outstanding Player; two-time ACC Tournament champion; 2009 national champion; 124-22 record.  I guess it’s obvious that I don’t think Hansbrough is actually the best player in ACC history, but I’m saying you can argue that and you would have a case.

I’ve been reflecting on what made Hansbrough so good.  He wasn’t an incredible athlete; he didn’t have great post moves.  He wasn’t an unskilled player – he did have a good shooting touch for a big man – but he wasn’t Nikola Jokic or Draymond Green out there either.  My first observation about the secret to Hansbrough’s success is that he turned drawing fouls into a huge competitive advantage – probably better than anyone else in the history of college basketball. 

I knew he got to the line a lot, but when you look at the numbers, it’s really amazing.  He is the all-time NCAA leader in free throws made.  By a lot.  The Top 10:

• Hansbrough, 982
• Dickie Hemric, Wake Forest, 905
• Pete Maravich, LSU, 893
• Oscar Robertson, Cincinnati, 869
• Caleb Green, Oral Roberts, 852
• Don Schlundt, Indiana, 826
• Troy Bell, Boston College, 810
• Bill Bradley, Princeton, 791
• Alonzo Mourning, Georgetown, 771
• Derrick Chievous, Missouri, 764

The value to his team from him getting to the line can hardly be overstated.  Let’s try to quantify it.  In 2008, Hansbrough averaged 9.7 free throw attempts per game.  Let’s round it to 10 per game to simplify the calculations.  And then let’s assume that they were all two-shot fouls, again to simplify the calculations.  That means that five possessions per game for the Tar Heels were ending with Hansbrough going to the line for two shots.

He shot 80.6% from the line.  So that means that, on average, he would score 2 * .806 = 1.612 points per possession on a 2-shot foul.  How good is that?  Well, the best offense in the country is typically around 1.2 points per possession.  So for each of those five possessions, the Tar Heels were 0.4 points better than the best offense in the country.  That comes out to +2 points per game better than the best offense in the country – just because of Hansbrough’s trips to the line.

In reflecting on Hansbrough’s success more generally, I think he has a lot to teach us about excellence in college basketball, and how it can be achieved.  In particular, I assert that Hansbrough achieved greatness by taking his biggest strength and hyper-developing it, beyond any reasonable expectation of success.  In other words, he kept doubling down on what he was already good at, rather than focusing on expanding his game.

That’s not to say that he didn’t expand his game at all. He did.  But the cornerstone of his success was his ability to use his size and strength around the basket, and what he did was to get more out of that than seemed possible.  I’m sure Hansbrough had people along the way tell him, son, you can only take that bull-in-a-china-shop thing so far.  You need to expand your game, improve your perimeter shot, work on your handle, become a better passer, etc.  But he didn’t take that approach.  Instead, he said hey, I’m already really good at what I do, but I’m going to keep getting better at it.  I’m good at putting my head down and getting to the line, but what if I get to the line more than anyone else in the history of college basketball?  I’m strong, but I’ll get stronger. I’m a good free throw shooter, but I’ll become a great one.  I’m a good offensive rebounder, but I’ll become a great one.

This, then, is the basketball genius of Tyler Hansbrough: his committed, confident, focused single-mindedness.  He knew exactly who he was as a player.  He kept the game simple.  He never tried to be what he wasn’t.  He didn’t fret about his weaknesses; he consolidated his strengths.  Basketball is a sport that rewards that.  If you want to be a great basketball player, develop one thing that nobody can stop, and keep developing it.  It might take you all the way to the top.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

When you first get to school, you’d end up in Rat League [pickup games]. It was make it, take it. You played to 10 baskets. It was kind of routine that if you got up against Heyman’s team, you’d go 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 and then you’d sit down. Heyman was the best player ever at Duke… there was no more dominant force than Heyman. – Jack Marin in Game of My Life by Alwyn Featherston

Art Heyman was the best of the early generation of Yankees who came down south to play in the ACC.  Heyman was the center of a fierce recruiting battle between North Carolina’s Frank McGuire and new Duke head coach Vic Bubas.  Bubas’ landing of Heyman (who had previously committed to North Carolina) catapulted the Blue Devils into national prominence and ignited their run of excellence in the 1960s.  In Heyman’s senior season, the Blue Devils reached the Final Four and a #2 national ranking.  He was ACC Player of the Year, Consensus National Player of the Year, ACC Tournament Most Outstanding Player, and NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player.  He made first team All-ACC three times.

Heyman’s jersey wasn’t retired at Duke until 1990. This was ridiculous, and Heyman, a brash, fiery, competitive player, resented it. There were numerous fights and confrontations during his career, including a well-known fight with North Carolina players during a game in 1961.  But through it all, he managed to stay eligible and on the court, and continued to dominate.  He was one year behind Len Chappell, and the two of them had some tremendous battles.  Here are the results of their five head-to-head matchups:

Date	Game Result	Chappell	Heyman
2/9/1961	Duke, 100-90	24	31
2/14/1961	Wake, 103-89	38	31
12/31/1961	Duke, 75-73	37	33
1/27/1962	Duke, 82-68	24	26
2/15/1962	Wake, 97-79	37	18

And how’s this for a Senior Day?  Heyman had 40 points and 24 rebounds to lead Duke to a 106-91 trouncing of North Carolina, completing a perfect ACC regular season for the Blue Devils.

Heyman was named Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Tournament in 1963 despite the fact that the Blue Devils lost in the semifinal.  This was fairly common at the time.  A player from a non-winning team received the award in 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1966, and 1971.  Since 1971, the only non-winning player to be MOP is Akeem Olajuwon in 1983.  It’s hard to say exactly why this changed, although dropping the third-place game in the Final Four probably has something to do with it.  Of course, it’s perfectly sensible that the best player in the tournament might not have been on the winning team, and the voters in the 1950s and 1960s clearly had no compunction about saying that, but at some point it became accepted practice to pick a player from the winning team.  It would be interesting to look back at the tournaments since 1971 and figure out who the real MOP was.  But that’s a project for another day.

2003 Top 50 List: Not eligible

Dan Collins List: Yes

I hated him too, but he was damn good.  Two-time ACC Player of the Year.  Two-time ACC Tournament Most Outstanding Player.  National Player of the Year as a senior, runner-up as a junior.  Second-leading scorer all time (to Tyler Hansbrough) in the ACC.  All-time leader in three-pointers made, both single-season and career.  Career free throw percentage leader.  That’s a Top 10 player.

His senior year was flat out one of the greatest seasons in ACC history.  He averaged 27 points with the True Shooting Percentage of 63%.  He averaged 29.4 in ACC games.  There is a strong case for that as the greatest offensive season in ACC history.  Remember how he did it?  After three years of bombing threes with incredible proficiency, he suddenly added a floor game and starting driving.  He shot nearly as many twos as threes, and he got to the line, and he made them all, or at least it seemed that way.

What I remember most are the daggers.  More than any player I can remember, he hit daggers.  You were hanging around, keeping it close, trying to make a run late in the game, and then Boom.  Boom.  Boom.  You’re done.  Good night.

If there’s anything you can hold against Redick, it’s that he laid some eggs in the NCAA Tournament.  In both 2005 and 2006, Duke was a #1 seed after winning the ACC Tournament.  In both years, they were upset in the Sweet 16, and Redick shot 4-for-14 and 3-for-18 respectively in those games.  For his career, he played in six games in the Sweet 16 or later, and he shot 28% in those six games.  He did not have a signature performance in a big NCAA Tournament game.

But he sure had some in the ACC Tournament.  He is, in fact, the tournament’s all-time leading scorer.  As a freshman in 2003, Redick scored 23 points in the last 10 minutes to lead the Blue Devils to a comeback win in the final against NC State.  And that’s not one of the two years that he was Most Outstanding Player.  If one were making an All-Time All-ACC Tournament team, Redick would be on it. It’s an interesting fact (courtesy of the Greenville (SC) News of March 17, 2003) that in that 2003 tournament, the votes for Tournament MOP had to be submitted with four minutes left in the final. Redick scored 13 points in those last four minutes. Had the votes been submitted after the game, Redick would probably be the only three-time ACC Tournament MOP.

I think Redick, as good as he was, was underestimated.  He kept surprising you by getting better when you figured he had peaked.  He was more athletic than you think, but he didn’t overwhelm anyone with his size or quickness.  So there was a tendency to think, how much better can a one-dimensional, not-all-that-athletic shooter get?  The same thing happened in the NBA.  It took him several years to really get his career going, and a lot of people wrote him off as someone who would never be more than a bit player.  But he figured things out.  He knew what he was good at, he understood how the games were called, he made moving without the ball a science, and he worked hard to develop his game to maximize what he did well.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

What can I say about Len Bias that hasn’t already been said?  The tragic circumstances surrounding his untimely death have conferred upon him a kind of mythical status, a basketball version of James Dean.  Is it possible to chip away at the layers of myth and discover the player underneath?

He was a part of one of the greatest classes in ACC history, the Class of 1986.  In addition to Bias, there were four other players who made the Top 100: Johnny Dawkins, Mark Price, Brad Daugherty, and Mark Alarie.  Those five players comprised first team All-ACC in 1986, and that is the only time in ACC history that all five spots were occupied by seniors.  As you might imagine, it was an exceptional year for the conference overall; 75% (6 out of 8) of the teams made the NCAA Tournament (and the 7^th-place team, Clemson, was pretty darn good).  Four teams made the Sweet 16, and Duke went to the national final before losing to Louisville.

Was Bias the best of the group?  The ACC writers certainly thought so.  In 1985, he was unanimous first team All-ACC and garnered 54 of the 92 ACC Player of the Year votes (NC State’s Lorenzo Charles was second with 28).  In 1986, he was again unanimous first team All-ACC and garnered 81 of the 133 ACC Player of the Year votes (Dawkins was second with 40).

Bias was a first-team All-American as a senior but ran behind Dawkins, St. John’s Walter Berry, and Kentucky’s Kenny Walker in national Player of the Year voting.  Perhaps Bias was the best of the bunch, or maybe it’s too easy to romanticize about him because of what happened. In any case, it didn’t help that he played on a team that went 6-8 in the ACC, while Duke, St. John’s, and Kentucky were among the best teams in the country.  Despite the record, the ACC voters understood the greatness they were watching.  Bias had 41 in a midseason loss to second-ranked Duke.  Then he topped that performance a few weeks later with 35 in a win over #1 North Carolina – the Tar Heels’ first ever loss at the Dean Dome.

His career was characterized by constant growth.  He had a rare combination of athleticism, grace, intelligence, and a tremendous work ethic.  He was considered raw as a freshman, but just kept polishing his game and adding elements to it year by year, until by his senior year, he was incredibly skilled for a big man.  As a senior, he led the ACC in free-throw percentage at 86%, one of the few true big men (Sam Perkins, Christian Laettner, and Wake Forest’s Darius Songaila are the others) to lead the league in that category. He was, in many ways, like Michael Jordan – a kind of basketball savant who was getting better at an exponential rate and leaving his peers behind. I am firmly convinced he would have been an NBA Hall-of-Famer and an all-time great had June 18, 1986 never happened.

Bias, by all accounts, was a person of strong character and integrity. How do we reconcile this with his drug use? I read the 1992 book Lenny, Lefty, and the Chancellor by Fraser Smith to get some insight on that question. Ultimately, I think it comes down to three things. 1) It’s more common than we realize for public figures under pressure to perform to have some sort of private escape, often something disreputable, they turn to as a coping mechanism. We shouldn’t be surprised at this. 2) Bias was not an addict. He lived in a time and place when it was fairly common to use cocaine occasionally to celebrate or to take the edge off. 3) His overdose was a freak accident. Millions of young people have done things riskier than Len Bias and gotten away with them. While the overall picture of Bias that emerges from the book is psychologically complex, it does support the conclusion that he was, in fact, a person of strong character and integrity who likely would have matured, left drugs behind altogether, and fulfilled the greatness that was expected of him. But he never got the chance.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Len Chappell was the best player on the excellent Wake Forest teams of the early 1960s.  He was a year ahead of Art Heyman and won ACC Player of the Year over Heyman in 1961 and 1962 (Heyman won in 1963).

Chappell’s position on this list might strike some as high.  He did not do as well nationally in All-America voting as others of that era – Heyman, Lennie Rosenbluth, even Ron Shavlik.  In his junior year, he finished 17^th in the AP All-America balloting, good for Honorable Mention.  As a senior, he was 5^th in AP balloting, making him the last player on first team, and he made second team UPI.

But Chappell is a player for whom a significant adjustment has to be made in light of his play in the ACC and NCAA Tournaments.  Keep in mind that All-America voting at that time took place in late February or early March, before any tournaments had been played.  All-ACC and Player of the Year voting took place after the ACC Tournament.  This often provides an explanation when the ACC voting does not seem to line up with the national voting, and this is the case with Chappell.  He is, quite simply, one of the outstanding tournament performers in ACC history.

In his three years, his teams went 7-1 in the ACC Tournament, winning twice and losing in the final once.  In those games, he averaged 27.5 points.  He is second to JJ Redick (who played four more games) in total career points in the tournament.  Chappell, Redick, Larry Miller, and Tom Burleson are the only players ever to be ACC Tournament MVP twice.  After the 1961 final in which Chappell scored 33 to lead the Deacs to a 96-81 win over Duke, Vic Bubas said:

”Chappell proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s an All-American in this tournament.  If there’s a better big man in college basketball, I haven’t seen him.  I don’t see how they could leave him off any All-American team.” – The Charlotte Observer, 3/5/1961

Then there’s the NCAA Tournament.  In 1961, Chappell had:

• 31 and 20 in a 97-73 first round win over St. John’s, a team that was ranked in the Top 10 most of the season
• 24 and 15 in a 78-73 Sweet 16 win over #2 St. Bonaventure
• 32 and 16 in a 96-86 Elite Eight loss to St. Joseph’s

(As an aside, note that’s three straight matchups between the Baptists and the Catholics.)

So that’s an incredible three game run by Chappell, taking the Deacs to an unexpected Elite 8 appearance, after his incredible ACC tournament.  But he wasn’t done.  In 1962, Wake was back in the tournament, and this time, they made the Final Four and won the third place game.  So Chappell had five tournament games.

• 25 and 18 in a first round 92-82 win over Yale
• 34 and 18 in a revenge victory over St. Joseph’s in the Sweet 16
• 22 and 21 in a 79-69 win over Villanova to send Wake to the Final Four
• 27 and 18 in the semifinal loss to John Lucas, John Havlicek, and Ohio State
• 26 and 11 in the third place game win over Walt Hazzard and UCLA.

So let’s add all this up.  In ACC and NCAA Tournament play in this career, Chappell played in 16 games.  His teams went 13-3 in those games.  He scored 441 points and pulled down 223 rebounds, for an average of 27.6 points and 13.9 boards.  He was MVP of the ACC Tournament twice, leading his team to two titles.  He then led the Deacons, who were not ranked in the Top 10 either season, to an Elite Eight appearance and the only Final Four in school history.

He was pretty good in the regular season too.  He’s all over the ACC record books.  Last ACC player to average 30 points per game.  Still holds the record for most points (50) in an ACC game.  Had a record eight consecutive games of 30+ points, and a record of 27 consecutive games of 20+ points.  In the Top 10 in career points per game and rebounds per game.  26 double-doubles in 1961-62, second only to Tim Duncan’s 29 in 1996-97.  One of only four players to score 900+ points in a season.  I could go on.

This is a case where the All-America voting does not do justice to how great a player this man was. Chappell was a man among boys whose physical strength was legendary, something like a 1960s version of Tyler Hansbrough. As a senior, he shot 383 free throws in 31 games – over 12 attempts per game. Even Hansbrough, the NCAA’s all-time leader in free throws, never approached that. Chappell was unstoppable.