2003 Top 50 List: No
Dan Collins List: No
Eric Montross is a difficult player to rank. I always felt that he was overhyped. A prized recruit from Indiana, he steadily improved through his first three years and had a great year for the 1993 national championship team. Montross and George Lynch both made first team All-ACC, and they deserved it. But nationally, Montross got the attention. He made second team All-American along with Rodney Rogers, while Lynch made nothing. Montross finished ahead of Rogers in Wooden Award voting. He wasn’t better than Rodney Rogers on the best day of his life.
The hype train was at full speed heading into the 1994 season. Montross was the top vote-getter on the preseason All-America team – ahead of Grant Hill, Glenn Robinson, and Jason Kidd. Instead, he took a step backwards, averaging only 13.6 points and regressing significantly in FG% and FT%. Late in the season, he had a stretch of nine ACC games in which he scored a total of 82 points. When the votes were tallied, Montross wound up on second team All-ACC, finishing behind teammate Derrick Phelps and Clemson’s Sharone Wright in the voting, among others.
But nationally, the voters didn’t get the message. Montross made second team AP All-America, first team (!) NABC All-America, and finished 9th in Wooden Award voting. It’s a perfect illustration of the difficulties with national voting, where votes are often cast based on reputation rather than performance. I’m sure most of the voters take their responsibilities seriously, but their day jobs require them to focus locally. It’s natural they won’t know players from across the country as well, and so they vote on reputation.
“It’s hard to say North Carolina center Eric Montross has had a bad season. He’s second on the team in scoring at 13.7 points per game and first in rebounding at 8.1. He’s hitting 54.3% of his shots. OK, you can say he’s a bad free-throw shooter, courtesy of a 57.3% mark from the line, but that’s about it. Still, it was more than a mite surprising to see Montross listed as one of the five finalists for the Naismith Award as college basketball’s player of the year. It made you wonder if they’d been watching film of last year’s NCAA Tournament instead of this year’s games. Admittedly Montross has battled some oppressive zone defenses, but he has not had an All-American year. He hasn’t even been the best center in the ACC with Maryland’s Joe Smith emerging for that honor. It makes you wonder if those nominations are by reputation only.” – Lynn Zinser, The Charlotte Observer, 3/5/1994
In Montross’ defense, the 1994 Tar Heels were not a good perimeter shooting team. Donald Williams had a disappointing year, and there were some injuries in the backcourt. Teams did collapse inside and challenge the Heels to make perimeter shots. Montross’ offensive game lacked the variety to adjust to the way he was being defended. Additionally, the team had chemistry problems which had nothing to do with Montross. As the season went on, seniors Brian Reese and Kevin Salvadori found themselves sitting and watching freshmen Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace take more and more of their playing time. It seemed to create a negative vibe. The Heels still won the ACC Tournament and received a 1 seed, but somehow it wasn’t that big of a shock when they were upset by Boston College in the second round.
The other thing that happened to Montross in 1994 is that he simply got leapfrogged by younger, better players. Joe Smith, Tim Duncan, even Cherokee Parks – these guys were more athletic and had more complete games than Montross.
But he was what he was – a two-time All-American and a first team All-ACC player who made huge contributions to a national championship team. He deserves to be on the list.