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.