25/24. John Roche, South Carolina, 1969-1971; Charlie Scott, UNC, 1968-1970

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

[Charlie Scott] was the first Carolina player that really would compare to today’s player. His build, his speed, his ability – you could take him out of the late 1960s and drop him into today’s game, and he wouldn’t miss a beat. – Woody Durham, quoted in North Carolina Tar Heels, Where Have You Gone? by Scott Fowler

John Roche and Charlie Scott were probably the hardest players to write about on this entire list.  Not because I couldn’t think of what to write, but it’s actually the opposite problem – there’s too much material.  Great players, great teams, great games, controversies, integration, Jim Crow, civil rights, the Frank McGuire storyline, the South-Carolina-leaving-the-ACC storyline… it’s all there.

First the basics.  Charlie Scott played from 1968-1970.  He was the first black scholarship athlete at UNC.  John Roche, who was white, played from 1969-1971.  They were the two best players in the ACC in 1969 and 1970.  In both years, Roche won close ACC Player of the Year votes over Scott, 56-39 in 1969 and 51-47 in 1970.  These votes were very controversial at the time, and in a sense, they still are.  There were accusations, credible but unprovable, that Scott was slighted in those votes because of race.

Adding spice to the whole situation is that UNC and South Carolina were the best teams in the conference (throw in NC State in 1970), so they were battling it out for conference supremacy.  South Carolina won three out of four head-to-head meetings in those two seasons. The first of those Gamecock wins was particularly memorable and seems to have had a lot to do with Roche winning that Player of the Year vote.  Roche scored 38 points to lead the Gamecocks to a 68-66 upset over the second-ranked Tar Heels.  After the game, the superlatives were flowing and the hyperbole was thick.  “I’d rather have Roche than Pete Maravich, Calvin Murphy, or any other ball player in the country,” declared Gamecock captain Bobby Cremins.  “I’ve never had an individual to give that kind of performance before,” declared the Gamecocks’ jubilant coach, Frank McGuire. – The State (Columbia, SC)

The Tar Heels won the rematch on February 25, but it seems that by then, opinions had been formed, and the memory of Roche’s legendary performance was too strongly imprinted on the voters’ minds.  Scott did not play particularly well in either game, which didn’t help.

There were no legendary performances in 1970, but the Gamecocks won both matchups on their way to an undefeated ACC regular season.  Scott again did not play particularly well in these games.

So I think all these factors played into Roche’s winning those POY votes.  In 1969, it was about his incredible performance when they played in early February.  In 1970, South Carolina was just a better team, and it was too much for Scott to overcome.

But it should also be said that we can’t reduce their careers to their head-to-head matchups, or even to the 1969 and 1970 seasons.  Scott played in 1968 without Roche, and Roche played in 1971 without Scott.  Scott was a first-team All-ACC performer on the 1968 team that advanced to the national final before losing to Lew Alcindor and UCLA.  Roche came back in 1971 with a chance to become a three-time ACC Player of the Year, something no one had accomplished at the time.  The Gamecocks had a fine season, winning their first ACC Tournament in their last year in the conference, but Roche came up short in Player of the Year voting, losing to Wake Forest’s Charlie Davis (who was black, which complicates the racial bias narrative) by a wide margin.

All-America voting is interesting.  If you look at it from a head-to-head perspective, Scott clearly did better:

Year	Scott	Roche
1969	1 – USBWA, NABC; 2 – AP, UPI	Nothing
1970	1 – USBWA, NABC; 2 – AP, UPI	2 – AP, NABC

But don’t forget, each played another year.  If you line them up by class year, the picture still favors Scott, but not by much:

Year	Scott	Roche
Sophomore	Nothing	Nothing
Junior	1 – USBWA, NABC; 2 – AP, UPI	2 – AP, NABC
Senior	1 – USBWA, NABC; 2 – AP, UPI	1 – UPI, USBWA; 2 – AP, NABC

So who was better?  It seems to be almost a settled opinion now that Scott was the better player and that those Player of the Year votes were an injustice.  While that is far from an obvious conclusion, the balance of the evidence does seem to favor that Scott was the better player and fell victim to some combination of racial bias and bad timing.  Considering their careers holistically, it’s very close.  Roche had another tremendous year after Scott was gone, but then I guess you could say that Scott had a tremendous year before Roche arrived.

Scott’s experience as the first black scholarship athlete at UNC and the first black star athlete in the ACC is a fascinating one.  Art Chansky wrote a very good short book called Game Changers, which I highly recommend if you’re interested in the subject.  It focuses not only on Scott’s experience but also Dean Smith and his leadership and influence in civil rights.  In the book, Scott comes across as a complex character, admirable but not particularly likable, highly intelligent, proud, independent, somewhat cold and distant, shaped by his childhood and obviously by the intense and unusual circumstances he experienced as the integrator of UNC basketball.