2003 Top 50 List: Yes
Dan Collins List: No
Here is the history of Clemson players in ACC Player of the Year balloting:
- 1987: Horace Grant, 102 votes (out of 140) – winner
- 1990: Dale Davis, 4 votes
- 1990: Elden Campbell, 4 votes
- 2000: Will Solomon, 3 votes
- 2014: KJ McDaniels, 1 vote
That’s it. Such is the history of Clemson basketball. Horace Grant had an absolutely monster year in 1987. He was ACC Player of the Year and led the league in scoring, rebounding, and FG% (Tim Duncan 1997 and Marvin Bagley 2018 are the only other players to do that). He led the Tigers to a 10-4 ACC record, tied for the best in program history with the 1990 team. And he wasn’t surrounded by a bunch of other great players. In another discrepancy between ACC voters and national voters, Grant made second team All-America, while Kenny Smith made first team; but in ACC POY voting, Grant received 102 votes, Smith 27. So who was really the better player?
Here’s a side note on that 1987 season by Grant. He averaged 21 points per game on 65.6% shooting from the field. How good is that? Well, guess how many seasons of 20+ PPG and 65+% shooting there have been in all of college basketball since 1993? The answer is three:
- 2001, Michael Bradley, Villanova, 20.8 PPG, 69.2% FG
- 2009, Blake Griffin, Oklahoma, 22.7 PPG, 65.4% FG
- 2019, Zion Williamson, Duke, 22.6 PPG, 68% FG
That 1987 season, and Grant’s career, ended in excruciating fashion. The Tigers went 25-4 in the regular season, losing twice to North Carolina and twice to Duke, and beating everybody else. They went into the ACC Tournament as the #2 seed, but the Tigers lost in the first round to Muggsy Bogues and Wake Forest. Then they were upset by Missouri State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, and that was that. What seemed like the best team and season in Clemson basketball history ended with a thud.
Grant was really good as a junior as well, averaging 16.4 points and 10.5 rebounds and shooting 58% from the field, but he received no recognition, finishing behind the likes of Steve Hale in All-ACC balloting. The problem was, Clemson finished 3-11 in the ACC, although they were better than that record indicated. Cliff Ellis was building something, but you couldn’t quite see the results yet. If Grant had played for a Duke or a North Carolina, he would have been a two-time All-ACC, first team All-American player.
Grant’s teams went 0-4 in the ACC Tournament, part of a nine-year stretch from 1981 through 1989 in which the Tigers lost in the first round every year. Unfortunately, that isn’t Clemson’s worst stretch; they lost 10 straight first round games from 1965-1974.
The best players in Clemson basketball history are all big men: Grant, Tree Rollins, Elden Campbell, and Dale Davis. Who are the best guards? Butch Zatezalo? Billy Williams? Vincent Hamilton? Will Solomon? Skip Wise, even though he only played one year? I’m going with Solomon and Zatezalo as my backcourt on the all-time Clemson team.
I was going to comment on the Kenny Smith post, but you beat me to the punch: YES Horace Grant was the best player in the ACC in 1987 and yes he deserved to be ahead of Smith in the All-America voting. But Kenny Smith played four years for a team that was probably ranked in the top 10 his entire career. It has always seemed that the voters for all-american teams favor players from more successful teams. You think there’s some way to quantify that? Maybe that can be your next project.
Also, I’d love to know where you found info about the AP voting methods through the years and the voting totals for the years you didn’t have whenever we talked about it…like 2 years ago?
I’ve gathered a lot of data on voting totals by looking at old newspaper articles. At some point, maybe when I’m done with this series, I’m going to clean it all up and post it. And I would like to look for evidence of bias as you suggest.
Regarding changes in the voting methodology, some of that is sprinkled throughout the newspaper articles; some of it is inferred. I did find one article in the Charlotte News in 1979 that is specifically about the AP voting changes. It explains how they went to a panel of 7 and actually names the 7 individuals. It seems they later went from 7 to 10 until 1989 when they scrapped it and went to the current format. That period from 1979 to 1989 is basically a black hole in terms of vote totals. There is no transparency at all except the occasional announcement that a player was unanimous.