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.