Month: September 2024

Record: 34-2, 14-2 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Won
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Christian Laettner (ACC POY), Bobby Hurley (2nd), Grant Hill (2nd), Thomas Hill (3rd)
All-Americans: Christian Laettner (National POY)

There are five teams in college basketball history that won a national championship and then returned essentially the same team the next year: 1967-8 UCLA, 1984-5 Georgetown, 1994-5 Arkansas, 2006-7 Florida, and 1991-2 Duke. All five teams reached the national final the next year. UCLA, Florida, and Duke won, while Georgetown and Arkansas lost. These teams are rightly recognized as among the best in the history of college basketball.

While 1992 Duke was essentially the same team as 1991, there was a little bit of roster change. Greg Koubek, a rotation big man who gave the ’91 team about 15 minutes a game, graduated. Billy McCaffrey, the second-leading scorer and an integral part of the 1991 team, decided to transfer. The only newcomer of note was Cherokee Parks, and he didn’t play a lot as a freshman. Mostly Coach K just tightened the rotation. McCaffrey’s playing time went to Thomas Hill, Grant Hill, and Brian Davis, all of whom went from 25 minutes per game to 30. Antonio Lang, who fell out of the rotation late in 1991, was a key player in 1992. The cornerstones, of course, were Hurley and Laettner.

Everybody got better in ’92. Laettner suddenly started raining threes, shooting 56% from the arc – still a conference record (provided we overlook Terry Gannon’s 59% in 1983 from 17’9″, and we should). Hurley’s scoring went up, FG% and FT% went up, assists went up, turnovers went down, fouls went down. Grant Hill took big steps forward in every category. Thomas Hill and Brian Davis contributed more.

This is probably the best offensive team in ACC history. They averaged 88 points per game on 54% shooting as a team. That is far and away the best FG% in league history, a full two percentage points better than 1998 UNC. They weren’t a great rebounding team; I don’t think they were an exceptional defensive team, although they could be very good at times. But they could put the ball in the basket as well as any team who ever played in the ACC.

Because of the inconsistent defense, there were a few regular season games where they couldn’t stop anybody and had to outscore them – which they did. They allowed 91 points to William and Mary. The beat Maryland 91-89 and Clemson 98-97. It seems the defense got better in the late stages of the season. After a 25-2 regular season, they cut through the ACC Tournament like a buzzsaw, dominating North Carolina 94-74 in the final.

The NCAA Tournament is remembered, and rightfully so, for the all-time classic regional final between Duke and Kentucky. What I didn’t remember as well was Duke’s next game, the national semifinal against Indiana. This was a really good Indiana team with Alan Henderson and Calbert Cheaney. Indiana started out on fire and opened up a 12-point lead late in the first half. At that point, the Blue Devils flipped a switch. Over the next 15 minutes or so of game action spanning the first and second halves, they went on a 31-6 run to turn the 12-point deficit into a 13-point lead, and that was effectively the ballgame. Indiana, to their credit, improbably clawed back into it late. A seldom-used player named Todd Leary hit three threes in a span of 25 seconds (!), and the Hoosiers had a possession down three with a chance to tie. But they couldn’t convert, and that was the Hoosiers’ last chance. Indiana committed 33 fouls in the game. The officiating prompted Bob Knight to call Ted Valentine “the greatest travesty I’ve ever seen in basketball in 33 years as a college head coach” after Valentine tagged him with a dubious technical in the second half.

The final was not one of the great ones. After a competitive first half, Duke dominated the second half with their defense, limiting Michigan to 51 points for the game. The Fab Five, as great as they were, were no match for the experience of this Duke group on the biggest stage. Hurley, not Laettner, was the Most Outstanding Player, and he deserved it, playing extremely well in the Final Four.

An oddity about this team is that they went wire-to-wire as the #1 team in the country despite losing two games. It’s unusual for a #1 team to lose and retain the top ranking, but it can happen, and here’s an example. Duke’s first loss was on February 5 at #9 Carolina. But #2 Oklahoma State and #3 Kansas also lost that week. What’s more, before next week’s poll came out, the Blue Devils went down to Baton Rouge and beat Shaq and LSU. So they retained the top spot.

Duke’s second loss was on February 23 at Wake Forest. But wouldn’t you know it, #2 UCLA, #3 Kansas, #4 Carolina, #5 Arizona, and #6 Ohio State all lost that same week. So Duke remained #1. They didn’t lose again.

This team has a very strong case to be #1. Their top 3 players (Laettner, Hurley, Hill) match up against anybody. It was almost a coin flip for me. I’ll explain my rationale in my final post in this series.

Record: 32-0, 14-0 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Won
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Lennie Rosenbluth (ACC POY), Tommy Kearns (1st), Pete Brennan (2nd)
All-Americans: Lennie Rosenbluth (National POY)

Now we come to the three teams with the strongest claims on being the greatest ACC basketball team ever: 1957 North Carolina, 1974 NC State, and 1992 Duke.

Coming into the 1957 season, things were looking up for Frank McGuire. He had been steadily building the program, funneling player after player from New York down south to build his roster. The 1956 team had been ranked as high as fourth nationally. The core of that team – Lennie Rosenbluth, Pete Brennan, Joe Quigg, and Tommy Kearns – was back in 1957. The Tar Heels were ranked sixth in the preseason poll.

Coach McGuire knew he had a good team and created a challenging non-conference schedule. Just before Christmas, they traveled north to play NYU, Dartmouth, and Holy Cross on back-to-back-to-back nights. Then, just after Christmas, they swept through the Dixie Classic, beating a very good Utah team, ninth-ranked Duke, and a tough Wake Forest team. A January 15 win over NC State brought the Tar Heels to 15-0 and a #1 ranking in the polls.

It was the next two games that took things from “they’re having a great season” to “maybe this is a team of destiny”. At Maryland, the Tar Heels trailed late but took advantage of a free throw miss to force overtime, eventually winning 65-61 in double OT. In the next game, Duke clawed back from an eight-point deficit to tie the game with 21 seconds left. Unfortunately for them, the Woollen Gym scoreboard was a little slow to update, and Duke’s Bobby Joe Harris thought the Blue Devils were still down two. He intentionally fouled Kearns, who sank two free throws to give the Tar Heels the winning margin.

From there, the biggest tests were three more tough games with Wake Forest, with the Tar Heels winning by three and five in the regular season and two in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament. With an easy win over South Carolina in the final, the they entered the NCAA Tournament at 26-0.

One gets the impression that McGuire hated the pressure that came with being undefeated and would have been perfectly happy with a loss somewhere along the way. According to ACC Basketball: An Illustrated History, McGuire said, “I don’t know how we keep winning… our kids are feeling the pressure building up from our winning streak. I think we’d be a better ballclub if we got knocked off in a couple of games. There’s no such thing as an undefeated season in basketball.”

Turns out, there is. It just takes back-to-back triple overtime wins in the Final Four.

The obvious question to ask is, as the only undefeated national championship team in league history, why isn’t 1957 Carolina #1? After all, they didn’t lose a game. What else could they have done? There is a certain unanswerable logic to that argument.

But the margin between a team that lost zero games and a team that lost one or two is razor-thin. If the Woollen Gym scoreboard operator had been a little quicker, this team might have been 30-1.

It seems that everyone who watched this team felt they had been lucky. NC State coach Everett Case said, “They’ve got a fine ballclub, but I think somebody’ll knock ’em off before the end of the season.” Duke coach Hal Bradley: “Carolina has a fine team… but I don’t think they have a great team. They are experiencing too many scares.” Call that sour grapes if you want, but even McGuire said “It’s uncanny how we could’ve kept our undefeated season going. We were lucky, awfully lucky, all season long in close games.”

In the final analysis, I give a slight edge to 1974 NC State and 1992 Duke. They had an element of dominance that seems lacking from the ’57 Tar Heels, and the ACC they faced was better from top to bottom.

But with each passing year, it seems less likely that another team from the ACC, or perhaps from any conference, will go undefeated again. The 1957 Tar Heels stand alone in the long and illustrious history of ACC basketball.

Record: 35-4, 13-3 (1st place tie)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Won
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Shane Battier (ACC POY), Jason Williams (1st), Nate James (3rd)
All-Americans: Shane Battier (National POY), Jason Williams (1st)

We’ve talked extensively about the 1998-2002 Duke run of greatness. All five of those teams are in the Top 50, but this one is the best. Actually, in my heart of hearts, I think the 1999 team was a little better, but I can’t justify ranking them ahead considering this team won the national championship.

After the incredible 1999 team, there were a lot of departures. Trajan Langdon graduated; Elton Brand, Will Avery, and Corey Maggette turned pro; and Chris Burgess transferred. The key returnees in 2000 were Battier, Chris Carrawell, and Nate James. To that group, they added four highly regarded freshmen in Jason Williams, Mike Dunleavy, Carlos Boozer, and Casey Sanders. The 2000 team wound up being better than expected. Carrawell, Battier, and James all made huge leaps forward, and Williams, Dunleavy, and Boozer were great.

Coming into 2001, expectations were sky-high. Carrawell was the only significant loss, and another highly-touted freshman in Chris Duhon was set to take his spot in the rotation.

The ACC was stacked as usual. Five of the ACC’s nine teams were ranked in the Top 10 at some point during the season. North Carolina, in Matt Doherty’s first year, returned the core (minus Ed Cota) of the 2000 Final Four team. Maryland was on the rise with the core group that would win the national championship the next year. Virginia and Wake Forest were both really good. And Georgia Tech was a solid team that went on to make the NCAA Tournament.

Duke came out hot, grabbing the #1 ranking when Arizona lost early. They swept a difficult early non-conference stretch with wins over Villanova, Texas, Temple, Illinois, Temple again, and Michigan. Their last nonconference test was a late December game in Oakland vs. #3 Stanford. The Cardinal pulled out a one-point victory in what seemed like a Final Four preview (Maryland would eventually mess that up by beating Stanford in the NCAA Tournament).

Duke responded by winning their next nine games, including a 42-point drubbing of #10 Virginia and a 23-point win over #9 Wake Forest. The last game of that streak was the 98-96 overtime “Miracle Minute” classic over Maryland at Cole Fieldhouse in which the Blue Devils came from ten points down with less than a minute to play to tie the game and win it in overtime. That ran the Blue Devils’ record to 19-1.

Meanwhile, down the road, North Carolina was putting together a run of their own. Coming into their first meeting with Duke, the Tar Heels had won 14 straight and were up to #4 in the polls. Both teams were undefeated in the ACC. The game was yet another Blue Blood classic as Carolina pulled out an 85-83 victory. After a Dunleavy three tied the game with 3.9 seconds left, Battier, trying to get a steal, was called for bumping into Brendan Haywood with 1.2 seconds left. The 49% foul shooter calmly stepped up and made both. Chris Duhon’s 50-foot heave at the buzzer was oh-so-close, but hit off the back iron. The Blue Devils were left to lament the 14 free throws they missed.

After a few easy wins, Duke dropped another tough road game to #12 Virginia – payback for the 42-point beatdown they suffered in the first meeting. The next-to-last game of the regular season was the rematch with Maryland. The Terrapins took another step forward in their coming of age by going into Cameron and taking an 11-point win. Carlos Boozer broke his foot in this game and would miss the next six as Casey Sanders stepped into the starting lineup.

As usual, the regular season closed with the rematch with Carolina. The Tar Heels had stumbled a bit with a mystifying loss at Clemson and a blowout at Virginia, and this game continued that trend. Without Boozer, the Blue Devils ran away with a 95-81 victory.

After closing the regular season with Maryland and Carolina, the Blue Devils had to beat those same two teams to win the ACC Tournament. The Maryland game was another thriller as Duke pulled out an 84-82 win. The final was anticlimactic as the Tar Heels, suddenly falling apart, laid an egg in a 79-53 loss.

Their march through the NCAA Tournament was businesslike. Boozer returned in the Sweet 16 matchup against UCLA. Sanders remained in the starting lineup while Boozer came off the bench. He didn’t do much in the regionals, just getting his feet wet again, but the Blue Devils didn’t really need him.

The Final Four brought the fourth meeting of the season between Duke and Maryland, who had just upset Stanford to win the West. Maryland played a terrific first half and led by eleven. Duke chipped away in the second half. There wasn’t a single decisive moment. The Blue Devils finally took the lead with about five minutes remaining, and Maryland would never get it back. Duke executed better down the stretch.

Arizona awaited in the final. The preseason #1 Wildcats had muddled through a disappointing regular season, but they got it going in mid-February. This was a tremendously talented team with Richard Jefferson, Gilbert Arenas, Loren Woods, and Luke Walton. Duke would stretch the lead out to 8-10 points, then Arizona would make a run and cut it to two or three, but they never could get the lead. They had it down to three as late as 2:30, but ultimately they could not come up with enough stops and the Blue Devils salted it away to secure Coach K’s third national championship.

Looking at the roster, they are one of just a handful of teams in league history with two first team All-Americans. They are the only team in college basketball history with two different players who each won a national player of the year honor. Williams was the NABC Player of the Year while Battier swept the rest. The supporting cast of Boozer, Dunleavy, James, and Duhon was exceptional.

As for numbers… they have the second-highest (after 1999 Duke) kenpom Adjusted Efficiency Margin since he started tracking in 1997. Offensively, they were overwhelming. They are the most prolific three-point shooting team in ACC history – the only team to average 10+ made threes per game. But they were also 7th nationally in two-point percentage. They didn’t turn it over and were excellent on the offensive glass. Defensively, they had the NABC Defensive Player of the Year in Battier. They are one of only two teams in league history (1999 Maryland) with over 400 steals. I suspect, but have not confirmed, that they forced more turnovers than any other team in league history. The defensive fundamentals were solid as well. They held opponents to an Effective FG% of 45.8, good for 29th nationally. There was one weakness in that they were pretty bad on the defensive glass. That kind of cancelled out how good they were on the offensive glass; most of their games that year involved both teams pulling down a ton of offensive rebounds. The difference was, Duke’s offensive boards turned into made threes, while the other team’s turned into misses or turnovers.

This team is a bit high in losses for an all-time great. There are 28 other teams in ACC history with four losses or fewer. But they played an incredibly difficult schedule, going 13-4 against ranked teams. They swept the ACC and NCAA Tournaments. Despite the schedule, they still have the fourth-largest average margin of victory (1999 Duke, 1973 NC State, 1998 Duke) in league history. There’s no question about their position as one of the greatest.

Record: 32-2, 12-2 (1st place tie)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Won
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: James Worthy (1st), Sam Perkins (1st)
All-Americans: James Worthy (1st), Sam Perkins (2nd)

This team checks all the boxes as one of the greats.

• National champion: check
• ACC Tournament champion: check
• ACC Regular Season first place: check (tied with Virginia)
• #1 ranking: check
• Record: 32-2, check
• Roster: Worthy, Perkins, Jordan. check

Of the teams we’ve reviewed so far, I’d say they are the first that has a credible argument to be at the top of the list.

Let’s recall the setting. The early 1980s Tar Heels were locked in a multi-year death struggle with Ralph Sampson and Virginia. The 1981 team had been ranked behind Virginia all year but had the last laugh, winning the ACC Tournament and beating the Cavaliers in the Final Four behind one of the all-time great performances by Al Wood. A dominant performance by Isiah Thomas in the final kept the Tar Heels from winning it all, but it was a great year.

Going into 1982, there were big shoes to fill with Al Wood graduating, but the young core of Worthy, Perkins, and Matt Doherty were back along with senior point guard Jimmy Black. Add to the mix an under-the-radar freshman named Michael Jordan, and the Tar Heels were preseason #1.

Sampson and Virginia were hot on their heels again. Wake Forest and NC State also had good teams that were ranked much of the season. The Tar Heels and the Cavaliers split their regular season meetings and each team lost only one other game, so that going into the ACC Tournament, each team had two losses. Carolina was ranked #1 and Virginia was #3. Unlike 1981, there were no early round upsets and the much-anticipated rubber match took place for the ACC title on March 7, 1982. The Tar Heels survived a slowdown affair, winning 47-45, and UVa was left to ponder another disappointment. (This game is said to be a contributing factor to the ACC’s decision to adopt a shot clock for 1982-1983.)

The Tar Heels were the top seed in the East. After an opening round scare against James Madison, they advanced steadily through the bracket, not blowing anyone out, but not really being threatened either. In the national semifinal, they topped a precocious Houston team with Drexler and Olajuwon to set up the titanic final with Georgetown.

The Hoyas had struggled through the first half of the season. After a three-game losing streak in mid-January, they found themselves out of the polls entirely. But freshman Patrick Ewing (or Pat, as he was called at the time) was finding his game and starting to dominate, and Georgetown caught fire. Coming into the national championship game, the Hoyas were 16-1 in their previous 17 games and were riding an impressive 9-game winning streak in which no opponent had scored more than 54 points. The Hoyas had dominated the West region.

One of the things this game is remembered for is the way that Ewing started out the game goaltending everything. In fact, the Tar Heels’ first four buckets were all goaltends, and in all Ewing goaltended five shots in the first ten minutes of the game. It seems to me that this fact has not received the attention it should in terms of its impact on the outcome of the game. Going back and watching the game, I found myself asking, what the hell was Georgetown thinking? These were obvious goaltends, not a single one was a difficult call. Essentially they spotted the Tar Heels ten points. Did they think James Worthy and Sam Perkins were going to be intimidated? That’s laughable. In a game that finished with a one-point margin, every point matters. I don’t think it’s an overreach to say that’s why Georgetown lost.

The game overall was played at a high level. Both teams shot 53% from the field (although North Carolina was below 50% on non-goaltended shots). Worthy played a magnificent game, going 13-for-17 from the field and scoring almost half the Tar Heels’ points. Black and Doherty clearly had no intention of shooting, so it fell to Jordan to be the third scorer to take some pressure off of Worthy and Perkins, and he was up to the challenge. We all know what happened at the end.

A few other observations about this team. They had no bench, and I mean no bench. Nobody off the bench averaged as much as two points. In their five NCAA Tournament games, they got a total of seven points off the bench. They could not have afforded an injury, nor could they afford foul trouble. Fortunately, they were very good at not fouling. They had only six foul-outs as a team for the whole season.

On a related note, they played a very slow tempo. I think there were several reasons for this. One, it helped them stay out of foul trouble. Fewer possessions = fewer fouls. But it wasn’t just them. That 1982 season still marks the lowest points per game average across the conference ever. Everyone was playing slowly. You might think it was ugly basketball, but it really wasn’t. Field goal percentages were high; six of the eight teams in the ACC shot over 50% from the field. But without a shot clock and without a three-point shot, possessions were long as teams passed it around the perimeter for quite a little while looking for an opportunity to get the ball inside. Watching games from that era, that’s the thing that sticks out to me as most obviously different – the number of wide open perimeter shots that are passed up, and guards and wings who had no intention of taking them.

So don’t be fooled by the seemingly unimpressive stats from 1982. Worthy’s 15.6 points per game would be 20-25 in a different context. He was a stud.

I said at the beginning that this team has a credible argument as the best ever. So why aren’t they? They have the resume, but what they lack from my perspective is dominance. Compared to the other candidates for the top spot, they had a lot of close games. Their average margin of victory was “only” 11.3. There are probably 80-100 ACC teams with a larger average margin than that. That’s not quite a fair comparison; because of the slow tempo, a margin of 11.3 is bigger than it sounds. But again, relative to the other candidates for the top spot, I just feel like this team was the least dominant.

Record: 37-2, 16-0 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in final
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Elton Brand (ACC POY), Trajan Langdon (1st), William Avery (2nd), Chris Carrawell (3rd), Shane Battier (3rd)
All-Americans: Elton Brand (National POY), Trajan Langdon (2nd)

Had they won the final against UConn, they would be number one. This team is arguably the greatest team in the history of college basketball to not win the national championship. There are other candidates; 1974 UCLA, 1992 UNLV, and 2015 Kentucky come to mind. But this team was unreal.

Let’s start with the roster. I was looking at teams that had 3+ players on my list of the Top 100 players in ACC history. Here they are:

• 1973-74 Maryland: Elmore (58), McMillen (39), Lucas (20)
• 1978 Duke: Gminski (19), Spanarkel (50), Banks (65)
• 1981 Carolina: Wood (55), Worthy (41), Perkins (15)
• 1982 Carolina: Worthy (41), Perkins (15), Jordan (5)
• 1984 Carolina: Jordan (5), Perkins (15), Daugherty (60), K. Smith (64)
• 1991-92 Duke: Laettner (3), Hurley (35), Hill (23)
• 1999 Duke: Brand (45), Langdon (70), Battier (14)
• 2010 Duke: Singler (53), Scheyer (93), Smith (66)

That’s pretty good company. But not only did this team have three of the 70 greatest players in ACC history. They had Chris Carrawell, who would win ACC Player of the Year the next season. They had Will Avery, an immensely talented guard who was named second-team All-ACC as a sophomore. Corey Maggette, who went on to be the thirteenth pick in the NBA draft after one season, couldn’t crack the starting lineup. Nate James, another future All-ACC performer, was the third guy off the bench. They had five players make All-ACC, never done before or since.

Then there’s the record. Tied with 1986 Duke for most wins by an ACC team in a season. One of just six ACC teams to finish a season with two losses or fewer. One of just eight ACC teams to go unbeaten in conference play. You like margin of victory? How about an average margin of 24.6 points – way ahead of 1973 NC State (21.8) and 2001 Duke (20.2) for the biggest of any ACC team? How about winning three ACC Tournament games by 37, 15, and 23?

From December 5, 1988 through March 21, 1999, a span of 30 games that included all 19 of their ACC games, they went 30-0 and had exactly two games that were closer than 10 points, a four-point win at St. John’s in late January and an eight-point win at Georgia Tech a couple of weeks later.

You know I like kenpom. His ratings go back to 1997, so a total of 28 seasons now. 1999 Duke is by far the highest-rated team in that span with an adjusted efficiency margin of 43 (second place is 2001 Duke at 37.3). That means that per 100 possessions, this Duke team scored 43 points more than they allowed, adjusting for schedule strength. They have the third-highest offensive efficiency rating ever, after 2015 Wisconsin and 2018 Villanova.

They shot 51.4% from the floor while holding opponents to 39.1%. They were first in Division I in field goals made, second in FG%, second in three-pointers made, seventh in 3FG%, first in free throws made, first in total rebounds, third in total assists, fourth in total steals, second in total blocks, nineteenth in lowest turnover percentage.

They had it all, but they lost. They had to play a great UConn team with a great player in Rip Hamilton and a Hall of Fame coach in Jim Calhoun, and they lost. They were better than UConn; I think they would have beaten them 7-8 times out of 10. But improbable things happen all the time. Duke didn’t play well and UConn did, and that was that.

Teams With Multiple Guys Who Won National POY At Some Point in Their Career on the Roster at the Same Time:

• 1962 Ohio State: Jerry Lucas (won POY in 1961, 1962), Gary Bradds (1964)
• 1969 UCLA: Lew Alcindor (1967, 1968, 1969), Sidney Wicks (1971)
• 1985 St. John’s: Chris Mullin (1985), Walter Berry (1986)
• 1986 Duke: Johnny Dawkins (1986), Danny Ferry (1989)
• 1989 Duke: Danny Ferry (1989), Christian Laettner (1992)
• 1999 Duke: Elton Brand (1999), Shane Battier (2001)
• 2000-2001 Duke: Shane Battier (2001), Jason Williams (2001, 2002)
• 2000-2002 Kansas: Drew Gooden (2002), Nick Collison (2003)