2003 Top 50 List: No
Dan Collins List: Yes
When I first started researching this project, one of the first things I looked at was the 2003 Top 50 list created by ACC area sportswriters. The two omissions that surprised me most were Rod Griffin of Wake Forest and Bob Verga of Duke.
Verga’s case is simple. He was a three-time first team All-ACC, two-time All-American player who missed being ACC Player of the Year by two votes in 1967. The only player with a comparable resume who isn’t in my Top 50 is Trajan Langdon, but I think Verga’s resume is stronger than Langdon’s. Langdon was not a serious contender for ACC Player of the Year; Verga lost a 52-48 vote to Larry Miller of UNC. Verga was unanimous first team All-ACC; Langdon was not.
The 1966 national championship game between UTEP and Kentucky is remembered for its racial storylines against the backdrop of the civil rights movement. What’s isn’t as well-remembered is that Kentucky beat Duke in the semifinals to advance to that game. Verga, who had been named the Most Outstanding Player of the East Region, was weakened by the flu and scored just four points. Had Verga been healthy, there’s a good chance it would have been Duke playing the Miners instead.
There is an ongoing debate in “Duke circles” about whether Verga’s jersey should be retired. I don’t have a strong opinion about it; for me, he is right around the cut line. All the players whose jerseys are retired rank higher than Verga on my list, but if you were going to retire another, Verga or Elton Brand would be next in line for me. (I don’t know if Brand has finished his degree; if not, he wouldn’t be eligible.)
I have long wondered what the explanation was for Vacendak winning ACC Player of the Year in 1966. I’ve never read or heard an explanation anywhere; I even talked to my old sportswriter friend, Joe Tiede, and he had no idea how it had happened. And he had probably voted on it! The only thing that would make some sense is that the voting took place after Vacendak was voted MVP of the ACC Tournament, but even that doesn’t fully explain it. You mentioned the specific dates of the votes, I’m wondering where you found this info? Old newspaper articles? Did any of those articles mention how odd this was for a guy to be named 2nd team all-conference and then, a week later, named conference POY?
Speaking of Joe Tiede and the 1966 Blue Devils; I remember a conversation we had one time about how the best teams don’t always win the championship. He thought that 1966 team could be the best team ever at Duke, national champions or not. 1999 Duke could also make that argument. Probably the most dominant ACC team I’ve ever seen.
The dates were the dates that the winners were announced in the papers. I don’t know when the actual votes were taken. But the newspaper articles implied that it was the ACC Tournament that put Vacendak over the top. It seems to have been a year when the voters were unusually undecided about who was the best player – you can see that from the way the vote was divided – and Vacendak’s tournament performance gave at least 31 of them a solution, and they grabbed it.