Record: 26-4, 12-2 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national semifinal
Final AP Ranking: 2
All-ACC Players: Bob Verga (1st), Jack Marin (1st), Steve Vacendak (2nd, ACC POY)
All-Americans: Bob Verga (2nd), Jack Marin (2nd)
After a hiatus of a couple of months, I’m ready to restart my countdown of the 50 greatest ACC teams ever. We continue the series with the 1966 Duke team.
Duke’s teams from 1962-1966 represent arguably the best five-year run in league history. I wrote about this previously in my Jack Marin post. If pressed, I would probably give the edge to Duke 1998-2002, but it’s close.
After reaching the Final Four in 1963 and 1964, Duke’s 1965 team had dipped just a bit. They still won the ACC regular season and were ranked in the Top 10 all year, but they were beaten by NC State in the ACC Tournament final and did not get the opportunity to make another Final Four run. But Verga, Marin, and Vacendak were all underclassmen. With the addition of big man Mike Lewis, it set the Blue Devils up for success in 1966.
After an early loss at #10 South Carolina, the Blue Devils faced defending national champion and top-ranked UCLA twice on back-to-back nights. Duke whipped the Bruins in both games and promptly jumped to #1 in the polls where they stayed for most of the season.
They dropped only two more games the rest of the way, finishing with a full three-game lead over second-place NC State. In the ACC Tournament, the Blue Devils put up 103 points in an opening round blowout of Wake Forest. In the semis, they edged North Carolina in the infamous 21-20 slowdown game. In the final, Duke topped NC State for their third ACC title in four years and avenged their loss to the Wolfpack from the year before.
In the regionals, the Blue Devils defeated fifth-ranked St. Joe’s and a Syracuse team featuring Dave Bing and Jim Boeheim to advance to the Final Four, where #1 Kentucky awaited. In a tight, tense game that wasn’t decided until the end, the Wildcats prevailed 83-79. Unfortunately for Duke, Bob Verga was suffering from the flu (or strep throat, depending on whom you ask) and scored only four points. Kentucky went on to fall to Texas Western in that classic 1966 final that is remembered for its racial and civil rights implications as much as for the action on the court. Had Verga not come down with something, it might have been Duke (who was just as white as Kentucky) playing in that game.
An interesting fact is that Steve Vacendak was the ACC Player of the Year in 1966 despite making only second-team All-ACC. At the time, the All-ACC vote was taken before the ACC Tournament, the ACC POY vote after. Vacendak’s tournament performance made such an impression on the voters that they voted him Player of the Year.
Bubas’ teams consistently had tremendous size and dominated the glass. The 1963 and 1964 teams started two 6’10” guys, which was pretty much unheard of in that era. The 1966 team was not quite so big, but Marin was an excellent rebounder at 6’6″ and Lewis is one of the best rebounders in league history. The net of it was a rebounding margin of +12.8.
Lowest ACC Tournament Scoring Averages for Winners of Everett Case Award (Tournament MOP):
- Steve Vacendak, Duke, 1966 – 10.0
- Dudley Bradley, North Carolina, 1979 – 12.5
- James Worthy, North Carolina, 1982 – 13.3
- John Kuester, North Carolina, 1977 – 13.5
- Lou Pucillo, NC State, 1959 – 13.7