2003 Top 50 List: Not eligible
Dan Collins List: No
Sean May is on this list for one reason: his 2005 NCAA Tournament performance, which was without question one of the greatest ever by an ACC player. Excepting that, I don’t think he is a Top 100 player. He basically played two years; his freshman year was cut short by injury and he played only 11 games. His sophomore year, he was a good player but not special; he was 9th in All-ACC voting, and I think that’s about where he belonged. His junior year was a genuinely great year. He made second team All-American and finished second to JJ Redick (and ahead of Chris Paul) in ACC Player of the Year voting . All of that would be enough for Top 150, but probably not Top 100 by itself.
I have tried not to overemphasize NCAA Tournament performance in this ranking. I don’t like the general trend towards “ring counting” as a way of ranking players. In college basketball, it’s a small sample size and tends to favor players from blueblood programs who are surrounded by other great players. But when a guy has an incredible performance and leads a team to a title, you have to give some credit for that.
Was May’s 2005 NCAA Tournament the best performance by an ACC player in tournament history? Fourteen ACC players have been named NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player:
- 1963 – Art Heyman
- 1974 – David Thompson
- 1982 – James Worthy
- 1991 – Christian Laettner
- 1992 – Bobby Hurley
- 1993 – Donald Williams
- 2001 – Shane Battier
- 2002 – Juan Dixon
- 2005 – Sean May
- 2009 – Wayne Ellington
- 2010 – Kyle Singler
- 2015 – Tyus Jones
- 2017 – Joel Berry
- 2019 – Kyle Guy
I think you can sort them naturally into three groups.
Group 1: All-time greats
Thompson, Laettner, Battier, Dixon, May
Group 2: Really good, but one notch below the very best
Worthy, Williams, Singler, Ellington, Heyman (in a losing effort)
Group 3: Not a historic performance, more of a “he was the best player on the best team”
Hurley, Guy, Berry, Jones
A case can be made for any of Group 1 as the best.
Thompson played only 4 games – not his fault, of course – and one of those was the famous Pitt game where he hit his head on the floor and everybody thought he was dead. In the other 3 games, he scored 40 (!) against Providence; 28 in the semifinal win over Bill Walton and UCLA, ending the Bruins’ run of 7 straight national titles; and 21 in the final win over Marquette. Overall he shot 54% and averaged 24 PPG, even with the 8 point injury game against Pitt. The significance of the win over UCLA magnifies his performance even more.
Laettner scored no less than 18 points in any of his 6 games, averaging 21 points and 6 rebounds per game. He shot 62% from the field, 91% from the line, and had 28 points and 7 rebounds in the semifinal upset over UNLV. This was not the year of the UConn buzzer beater (that was 1990) or the Kentucky shot (that was 1992). That’s how great Laettner was, you’re talking about his greatest tournament and it doesn’t even include those iconic moments.
Dixon scored 29, 29, 19, 27, 33, and 18 in his 6 games. He shot 54% from the field, 51% from three, 88% from the line. That Maryland team was very good, but unlike Laettner, Dixon wasn’t playing with two other guys in the Top 50. Dixon led that team all the way to the title.
Battier scored 21, 27, 24, 20, 25, and 18 in his 6 games. He shot 59% from two, 36% from three, 84% from the line. He had double-doubles in 5 of the 6 games. He had 12 steals, 16 blocks, and only 9 turnovers in the entire tournament.
May’s point/rebound totals were 19/8, 24/17, 14/10, 29/12, 22/7, and 26/10, averaging 22 points and 11 rebounds for the tournament. He shot an astounding 67% from the field and 77% from the line. In the final, he went 10-for-11 from the field and finished with 26 points and 10 rebounds.
Very, very difficult to pick a number one from that group. If I had to pick one, I would probably go with Laettner 1991. But May has a case, and a good one.