2003 Top 50 List: No
Dan Collins List: No
Tom Hammonds was a four-year starter for the Georgia Tech teams of the mid-1980s. He was the bridge between the Mark Price/John Salley teams (Price and Salley were seniors when Hammonds was ACC Rookie of the Year in 1986) and the 1990 “Lethal Weapon 3” Final Four team. Along with Danny Ferry, Hammonds was a unanimous 1989 All-ACC selection. He even snuck onto NABC Third Team All-American. He is one of 14 ACC players with 2000 career points and 800 rebounds (spoiler alert: all 14 are in the Top 100).
In Hammonds’ first ACC Tournament, the Jackets made a great run to the final, losing to Duke 68-67. After that, Hammonds never won another ACC Tournament game. And his NCAA Tournament experiences weren’t much better:
- 1986: #2 seed, upset by #11 LSU in the Sweet 16
- 1987: #7 seed, upset by #10 LSU (again!) in the first round
- 1988: #5 seed, upset by #13 Richmond in the second round
- 1989: #6 seed, upset by #11 Texas in the first round
The next year, when Hammonds was gone, the Jackets went to the Final Four. But I don’t knock him for the tournament results. He played well in his tournament games. It was just one of those things. The 1990 team took a step forward in spite of Hammonds’ departure, not because of it. In fact, if Hammonds had been on that team, I think they would have been right up there with UNLV as the best team in the country. As great as their perimeter players were, they were just too weak defensively on the interior.
It’s an interesting observation that of the Top 25 ACC players in career minutes played, six played for Bobby Cremins. Mark Price, Travis Best, Matt Harpring, Hammonds, Brian Oliver, Bruce Dalrymple, Kenny Anderson – these guys just never came out of the game. Kenny Anderson in his two years averaged 38.3 minutes per game, the highest career average I’m able to find. I think it’s safe to say that Cremins didn’t have an equivalent of the Dean Smith “tired signal”… most of the rest of the career minutes played leaders played for Krzyzewski, where it’s more about sheer volume of games played, although he plays his guys a lot of minutes as well.