2003 Top 50 List: No
Dan Collins List: Yes
Bob Lewis was Dean Smith’s first big recruit. A year later, Smith added Larry Miller, and the Tar Heels had something.
Lewis had a whale of a year as a junior in 1966. He led the league in scoring at 27 points per game and shot 53% from the floor. He was the leading vote-getter in All-ACC balloting, although he finished behind Steve Vacendak and Jack Marin in Player of the Year voting (I’ll have more to say about that strange POY vote in a later post). Lewis made third team AP All-American, which sells him a bit short based on the year he had. Under different circumstances, Lewis could have been ACC POY and at least second team All-America with the year he had.
If you think about it, at that time, Duke was really the ACC’s media darling. They had had an incredible run, winning the regular season title the previous four seasons, three ACC tournaments, a few Final Fours. North Carolina hadn’t done much under Dean Smith up to that point. So as strange as it sounds to our ears for a UNC player, I think Lewis flew under the radar a bit, and Duke’s players – Vacendak, Marin, and Bob Verga – got more attention.
As a senior, his numbers slipped, but he was still named first team All-ACC. Behind Lewis and Miller, the 1967 Tar Heels won the ACC Tournament for the first time since 1957 and made the first of many Final Fours under Dean Smith. That 1967 season was a real changing of the guard in the ACC. The Tar Heels slayed the dragon that was Vic Bubas and Duke, who didn’t win another ACC title until 1978. For the next few years, it was Dean Smith’s Tar Heels who dominated the league.
Lewis still holds a couple of school records at Carolina – most points in a game, 49 against Florida State in 1965 (see quote below), and most consecutive free throws made, 39. He is 14th all-time in career scoring average in the ACC. His scoring average of 27.4 in 1966 is the tenth highest scoring average for a season in league history.
J.K. (Bud) Kennedy has been head basketball coach at Florida State for 17 years and over that time he has seen some ballplayers come and go. Last night he stood with his feet in the middle of a pile of towels, scratched his head and looked at his team as it listlessly dressed following a 115-80 loss to UNC. “I thought I’d seen the best of them,” he said, “but this kid is the best shot I’ve ever seen… we tried to play him loose and we tried to play him tight. He shot over the loose ones, drove past the tight ones. We played him perfect several times, and he made the shot anyway.” – Bill Ballenger, Charlotte News, Dec. 17, 1965