2003 Top 50 List: No
Dan Collins List: No
Grady Wallace played two years at South Carolina, 1956 and 1957. He was a junior college transfer (remember when that was a thing?) from Pikeville (KY). His senior year was the year of North Carolina’s 32-0 national championship team. Lennie Rosenbluth was the ACC Player of the Year; Wallace was the second-best player in the ACC and was selected unanimously to first team All-ACC. A few brave souls even voted for Wallace as POY over Rosenbluth. Wallace was a consensus second team All-American as well. He led a Gamecocks program that had been an ACC doormat to at least respectability, if not excellence, culminating in a run to the ACC Tournament final – the only final the program made until their last two years in the league (1970 and 1971).
He scored. A lot. He led the nation in scoring in 1957, one of only two ACC players to do so (Virginia Tech’s Erick Green is the other). He also led the ACC in rebounding that year. He scored 54 in a win over Georgia – the fifth-highest total in ACC history. He is second to Buzz Wilkinson in ACC career scoring average and sixth in career rebound average. He had seven 40-point games in 1957, an ACC record for a single season. He is one of four players to score 900+ points in a season (Dennis Scott, JJ Redick, and Len Chappell are the others). There’s just too much there to leave out.
His case, his game, and his numbers are similar to Buzz Wilkinson. He scored a ton of points for a team that wasn’t all that great. If he played today, he’d be called a “volume shooter”. As we did with Buzz, we have to trust his contemporaries, who clearly saw him as an elite player.
Last Friday night after Coach Red Lawson had watched all-American candidate Wallace fire in 54 points against his Georgia team on its home court, he said “Wallace is the greatest offensive player I’ve ever seen.” – Rock Hill Herald, Dec. 26, 1956