2003 Top 50 List: Not eligible
Dan Collins List: Yes
I know I say this a lot, but Kyle Singler is tough to rank. There is a lot to be said both for and against his candidacy.
The case against Singler can be summed up by saying that there is nothing in his playing record that indicates that he was thought of by his contemporaries as an elite player. He never finished higher than fourth in All-ACC balloting. He never received support for ACC Player of the Year. He was not a Consensus All-American. He was a second team NABC All-American in 2011, but he wasn’t named by the other services, and to be honest, the NABC is the one I trust the least. College basketball coaches don’t have time to figure out who the best players in the country are.
In All-ACC balloting, Singler routinely finished behind other players who aren’t on the list – Trevor Booker, Malcolm Delaney, Jordan Williams. In fact, he finished behind Delaney in both 2010 and 2011, which raises the very valid question of why Singler is on the list but Delaney isn’t. Singler wasn’t even the best player on Duke’s team according to voters; Gerald Henderson, Jon Scheyer, and Nolan Smith did better in All-ACC and All-America balloting in 2009, 2010, and 2011 respectively.
But he has a case. He was ACC Rookie of the Year. He was All-ACC all four years, one of only seven players to do that. He was first team ACC All-Tournament three times, one of only thirteen players to do that. He was named Most Outstanding Player of the 2010 ACC Tournament. He led the 2010 team to the national championship and was named Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. He played more minutes than any player in ACC history. He is eighth among ACC players in career scoring all-time. His teams won 125 games over four years. He is, along with Christian Laettner, Danny Ferry, and Tim Duncan, one of four players in ACC history with 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds, and 200 assists.
The real difficulty with Singler is distilling his individual accomplishments from the collective accomplishments of the teams he played on. There is no doubt that Singler received a lot of opportunities that other players didn’t because he played on great teams with other great players; however, there is also no doubt that Singler made the most of those opportunities and helped Duke hang some banners as a result.
Gene Banks is a pretty good comp for Singler. Excellent as a freshman, made All-ACC all four years, never considered the best player in the conference or an elite player nationally, played on really good teams with other really good players (Spanarkel, Gminski). But I rate Singler higher because of his ACC and NCAA Tournament accolades.
I do have a nagging feeling that the deck is stacked a little too much in favor of the players from these elite programs. Perhaps Trevor Booker was just as good as Kyle Singler. Perhaps if we went back in time and Booker and Singler switched teams, we’d be talking about Booker right now as a Top 100 player. We’ll never know. We have to judge the players on what they did, not what they might have done had circumstances been different.