1995 North Carolina
Record: 28-6, 12-4 (1st place tie)
ACC Tournament: Runner-up
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national semifinal
Final AP Ranking: 4
All-ACC Players: Jerry Stackhouse (1st), Rasheed Wallace (1st), Jeff McInnis (3rd)
All-Americans: Jerry Stackhouse (1st), Rasheed Wallace (2nd)
1995 Wake Forest
Record: 26-6, 12-4 (1st place tie)
ACC Tournament: Champion
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Sweet 16
Final AP Ranking: 3
All-ACC Players: Randolph Childress (1st), Tim Duncan (1st)
All-Americans: Randolph Childress (2nd)
There is a strong argument that 1995 was the best season in the history of the ACC. I’m not going to try to prove that here, but let me at least offer some evidence.
Great teams? Carolina, Wake Forest, Maryland, and Virginia all finished 12-4 in the league, and all four advanced to the Sweet 16, meaning the ACC went 8-0 in the first two rounds. Of the nine teams in the ACC, seven were ranked in the Top 20 at some point during the season. Virginia had a stretch of six straight ACC games in January in which each opponent was ranked in the Top 25. Georgia Tech, a team with Travis Best, James Forrest, Drew Barry, and Matt Harpring, could manage no better than 8-8 in the league.
Great players? First team All-ACC was Joe Smith, Duncan, Stackhouse, Wallace, and Childress. All except Duncan were named first or second-team consensus All-American (Duncan was third team AP). A great player like Travis Best of Georgia Tech couldn’t even crack first team All-ACC.
Great games and memorable moments? How about the Randolph Childress ACC Tournament performance? How about the Duke-Carolina double overtime 102-100 Jeff Capel halfcourt shot Jerry Stackhouse dunk game? How about the Maryland-Carolina ACC Tournament semifinal in which Rasheed Wallace scored 33 to lead the Tar Heels to a 97-92 overtime win?
Compelling storylines? How about the Coach K back injury/Pete Gaudet/Duke finishing in last place storyline? How about the three of the four super sophomores (Wallace, Stackhouse, and Smith) turning pro after the season in what was the first mass exodus of underclass talent in league history?
In ranking the teams, I was tempted to make this a four-way tie and throw in Maryland and Virginia, but if you look closely, I do think Carolina and Wake are one notch higher in the pecking order. But it was impossible to pick between those two. They had essentially the same record and the same ranking; both had two great players; one won the ACC title, while the other advanced to the Final Four.
A few notable things about that Carolina team. First, they were one of the best offensive teams Dean Smith ever had, and that’s saying something. This team shot 55% from two-point range (third in the nation) and 41% from three-point range (fifth in the nation). All five starters averaged in double figures. Second, this team had no bench. Pearce Landry got about 15 minutes per game, Serge Zwikker and Pat Sullivan about 10 each, and that’s it. 83.2% of the scoring came from the starters. Without doing the research, I would conjecture that’s a record for a Dean Smith team.
Wake Forest flew under the radar for much of the season. They weren’t highly regarded before the season because nobody knew how good Duncan was. After an early February loss to Florida State, they stood at 5-4 in the ACC. But they caught fire down the stretch, winning their last seven ACC games including a resounding 79-70 win in the Dean Dome. Adding in the ACC Tournament and the first two games in the NCAAs, they won twelve straight before falling in the Sweet 16 to an outstanding, and probably underseeded, Oklahoma State team led by “Big Country” Bryant Reeves.