2003 Top 50 List: Yes
Dan Collins List: Yes
Three ACC players have been first team All-American, ACC Tournament Most Outstanding Player, and NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player in the same season: Art Heyman 1963, James Worthy 1982, and Shane Battier 2001. The other two were also ACC Player of the Year; Worthy was runner up to Ralph Sampson. Worthy scored 28 of the Tar Heels’ 63 points in the national championship game against Georgetown, and they needed every one of them, plus an assist from Fred Brown.
Worthy’s career trajectory was very similar to Sean May’s. Both were good as freshmen but missed a lot of time due to injury. Both made second team All-ACC as sophomores. Both made first team All-ACC as juniors, both were runners up in ACC POY voting, and both earned NCAA Tournament MOP in leading their respective teams to national championships. But Worthy was a little bit better every step of the way (except for the NCAA Tournament, where May’s performance was exceptional). Both turned pro after their junior year.
Worthy was a consensus first team All-American in 1982, but he was left off the first team by the Associated Press in favor of Kevin Magee of UC Irvine. Generally speaking, I regard the AP as more credible than the other services, but I’ve previously written about this period from 1979-1983 when the AP changed its voting process and appeared to manifest an anti-ACC bias which was evident in the records of Worthy, Mike O’Koren, Mike Gminski, Albert King, and Sam Perkins. Not to mention the fact that the voting was done prior to the NCAA Tournament and probably before the ACC Tournament, both of which Worthy was the MVP of. So in this case, I’m going to trust the other services. James Worthy was a first team All-American.
Worthy’s scoring totals are not that impressive on the surface, but in context they look better. He played during a low scoring era of college basketball. In fact, 1982 was the lowest scoring season in ACC history. The Top (or Bottom) 5:
- 1982 – 64.8 PPG
- 1959 – 65.0 PPG
- 1960 – 67.6 PPG
- 1958 – 68.3 PPG
- 2012 – 68.5 PPG
The ACC Tournament was especially bad. There were slowdown tactics from several teams. In the seven games, only one team surpassed 60 points. Over the next few seasons, the 5 seconds closely guarded rule and the 45-second shot clock were adopted to get teams to “stop messing around and play basketball”, to borrow a phrase from Bill James.