2003 Top 50 List: No
Dan Collins List: Yes
The arrival of Jim Spanarkel in the 1976 season was the first step towards the late 1970s Duke surge under Bill Foster, culminating in an unexpected run to the national championship game in 1978. Spanarkel was ACC Rookie of the Year as a freshman; second team All-ACC as a sophomore, narrowly missing first team; and first team All-ACC as a junior and senior. Spanarkel was also Most Outstanding Player of the ACC Tournament as a junior. Spanarkel was a high school teammate of Mike O’Koren.
He was never the best player in the league, but he was a really good player for four years. He scored over 2,000 points in his career. He ranks ninth in career steals. He shot 53% from the floor and 81% from the line. He was a second team All-American as a senior. He made huge contributions to great teams. He’s one of the best players who wasn’t named to the 2003 ACC’s 50 Greatest Players Team.
Spanarkel’s numbers dropped significantly between his junior and senior years. He went from 20.8 points/game to 15.9. Why did this happen? His FG% and FT% dropped a bit, but most of the drop was a result of fewer attempts. Taking a closer look at the numbers, it wasn’t just Spanarkel; the whole Duke team slowed way down between 1978 and 1979:
| FGA/Game | FTA/game | Points/Game | |
| 1977-78 | 62.7 | 24.7 | 85.6 |
| 1978-79 | 55.0 | 22.1 | 71.9 |
Duke was an extreme example, but the same thing happened across the league. The league average went from 81 points/game to 75 points/game. I don’t have an explanation for why this happened. I’m not able to find a rule change that would have driven it.
The radical change in Duke’s numbers is even stranger. Here you have a team that is coming off an incredible season, returning everybody, and their tempo changes dramatically the following year. Maybe teams started playing slowdown against them.
About the only thing he will do for you is win. He’s not very fast or quick, can’t jump, and is not a very good shooter. But when the other team presses, we give him the ball. When we need a basket, we give him the ball. If we’re having trouble stopping a big man, we put him on that guy. If we’re having trouble with a guard, we put him on that guy. – Spanarkel’s high school coach, quoted in The Blue Divide by Johnny Moore and Art Chansky