Author: thesnac

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

What can I say about Len Bias that hasn’t already been said?  The tragic circumstances surrounding his untimely death have conferred upon him a kind of mythical status, a basketball version of James Dean.  Is it possible to chip away at the layers of myth and discover the player underneath?

He was a part of one of the greatest classes in ACC history, the Class of 1986.  In addition to Bias, there were four other players who made the Top 100: Johnny Dawkins, Mark Price, Brad Daugherty, and Mark Alarie.  Those five players comprised first team All-ACC in 1986, and that is the only time in ACC history that all five spots were occupied by seniors.  As you might imagine, it was an exceptional year for the conference overall; 75% (6 out of 8) of the teams made the NCAA Tournament (and the 7^th-place team, Clemson, was pretty darn good).  Four teams made the Sweet 16, and Duke went to the national final before losing to Louisville.

Was Bias the best of the group?  The ACC writers certainly thought so.  In 1985, he was unanimous first team All-ACC and garnered 54 of the 92 ACC Player of the Year votes (NC State’s Lorenzo Charles was second with 28).  In 1986, he was again unanimous first team All-ACC and garnered 81 of the 133 ACC Player of the Year votes (Dawkins was second with 40).

Bias was a first-team All-American as a senior but ran behind Dawkins, St. John’s Walter Berry, and Kentucky’s Kenny Walker in national Player of the Year voting.  Perhaps Bias was the best of the bunch, or maybe it’s too easy to romanticize about him because of what happened. In any case, it didn’t help that he played on a team that went 6-8 in the ACC, while Duke, St. John’s, and Kentucky were among the best teams in the country.  Despite the record, the ACC voters understood the greatness they were watching.  Bias had 41 in a midseason loss to second-ranked Duke.  Then he topped that performance a few weeks later with 35 in a win over #1 North Carolina – the Tar Heels’ first ever loss at the Dean Dome.

His career was characterized by constant growth.  He had a rare combination of athleticism, grace, intelligence, and a tremendous work ethic.  He was considered raw as a freshman, but just kept polishing his game and adding elements to it year by year, until by his senior year, he was incredibly skilled for a big man.  As a senior, he led the ACC in free-throw percentage at 86%, one of the few true big men (Sam Perkins, Christian Laettner, and Wake Forest’s Darius Songaila are the others) to lead the league in that category. He was, in many ways, like Michael Jordan – a kind of basketball savant who was getting better at an exponential rate and leaving his peers behind. I am firmly convinced he would have been an NBA Hall-of-Famer and an all-time great had June 18, 1986 never happened.

Bias, by all accounts, was a person of strong character and integrity. How do we reconcile this with his drug use? I read the 1992 book Lenny, Lefty, and the Chancellor by Fraser Smith to get some insight on that question. Ultimately, I think it comes down to three things. 1) It’s more common than we realize for public figures under pressure to perform to have some sort of private escape, often something disreputable, they turn to as a coping mechanism. We shouldn’t be surprised at this. 2) Bias was not an addict. He lived in a time and place when it was fairly common to use cocaine occasionally to celebrate or to take the edge off. 3) His overdose was a freak accident. Millions of young people have done things riskier than Len Bias and gotten away with them. While the overall picture of Bias that emerges from the book is psychologically complex, it does support the conclusion that he was, in fact, a person of strong character and integrity who likely would have matured, left drugs behind altogether, and fulfilled the greatness that was expected of him. But he never got the chance.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Len Chappell was the best player on the excellent Wake Forest teams of the early 1960s.  He was a year ahead of Art Heyman and won ACC Player of the Year over Heyman in 1961 and 1962 (Heyman won in 1963).

Chappell’s position on this list might strike some as high.  He did not do as well nationally in All-America voting as others of that era – Heyman, Lennie Rosenbluth, even Ron Shavlik.  In his junior year, he finished 17^th in the AP All-America balloting, good for Honorable Mention.  As a senior, he was 5^th in AP balloting, making him the last player on first team, and he made second team UPI.

But Chappell is a player for whom a significant adjustment has to be made in light of his play in the ACC and NCAA Tournaments.  Keep in mind that All-America voting at that time took place in late February or early March, before any tournaments had been played.  All-ACC and Player of the Year voting took place after the ACC Tournament.  This often provides an explanation when the ACC voting does not seem to line up with the national voting, and this is the case with Chappell.  He is, quite simply, one of the outstanding tournament performers in ACC history.

In his three years, his teams went 7-1 in the ACC Tournament, winning twice and losing in the final once.  In those games, he averaged 27.5 points.  He is second to JJ Redick (who played four more games) in total career points in the tournament.  Chappell, Redick, Larry Miller, and Tom Burleson are the only players ever to be ACC Tournament MVP twice.  After the 1961 final in which Chappell scored 33 to lead the Deacs to a 96-81 win over Duke, Vic Bubas said:

”Chappell proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s an All-American in this tournament.  If there’s a better big man in college basketball, I haven’t seen him.  I don’t see how they could leave him off any All-American team.” – The Charlotte Observer, 3/5/1961

Then there’s the NCAA Tournament.  In 1961, Chappell had:

• 31 and 20 in a 97-73 first round win over St. John’s, a team that was ranked in the Top 10 most of the season
• 24 and 15 in a 78-73 Sweet 16 win over #2 St. Bonaventure
• 32 and 16 in a 96-86 Elite Eight loss to St. Joseph’s

(As an aside, note that’s three straight matchups between the Baptists and the Catholics.)

So that’s an incredible three game run by Chappell, taking the Deacs to an unexpected Elite 8 appearance, after his incredible ACC tournament.  But he wasn’t done.  In 1962, Wake was back in the tournament, and this time, they made the Final Four and won the third place game.  So Chappell had five tournament games.

• 25 and 18 in a first round 92-82 win over Yale
• 34 and 18 in a revenge victory over St. Joseph’s in the Sweet 16
• 22 and 21 in a 79-69 win over Villanova to send Wake to the Final Four
• 27 and 18 in the semifinal loss to John Lucas, John Havlicek, and Ohio State
• 26 and 11 in the third place game win over Walt Hazzard and UCLA.

So let’s add all this up.  In ACC and NCAA Tournament play in this career, Chappell played in 16 games.  His teams went 13-3 in those games.  He scored 441 points and pulled down 223 rebounds, for an average of 27.6 points and 13.9 boards.  He was MVP of the ACC Tournament twice, leading his team to two titles.  He then led the Deacons, who were not ranked in the Top 10 either season, to an Elite Eight appearance and the only Final Four in school history.

He was pretty good in the regular season too.  He’s all over the ACC record books.  Last ACC player to average 30 points per game.  Still holds the record for most points (50) in an ACC game.  Had a record eight consecutive games of 30+ points, and a record of 27 consecutive games of 20+ points.  In the Top 10 in career points per game and rebounds per game.  26 double-doubles in 1961-62, second only to Tim Duncan’s 29 in 1996-97.  One of only four players to score 900+ points in a season.  I could go on.

This is a case where the All-America voting does not do justice to how great a player this man was. Chappell was a man among boys whose physical strength was legendary, something like a 1960s version of Tyler Hansbrough. As a senior, he shot 383 free throws in 31 games – over 12 attempts per game. Even Hansbrough, the NCAA’s all-time leader in free throws, never approached that. Chappell was unstoppable.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

I feel like I have Ferry a little bit overrated here, but dang, the résumé is just too impressive.  He was a two-time ACC Player of the Year, and the votes were not close.  As a senior, Ferry and Arizona’s Sean Elliott split the national Player of the Year awards, with Ferry snagging the UPI/Naismith and the USBWA, and Elliott getting the others.  He played on three Final Four teams.  In both his junior and senior years, Duke was a #2 seed and beat a #1 seed to make the Final Four.  Ferry was Most Outstanding Player of the East region both times.  He was ACC Tournament Most Outstanding Player as a junior.  He is the only player in ACC history with 2,000 points, 500 assists, and 1,000 rebounds.

The other thing he has going for him is, if you look back at those late 1980s Duke teams, he wasn’t surrounded by overwhelming talent.  These were not the Duke teams of the early 90s, or the late 90s/early 00s.  This was the Duke of Kevin Strickland, Robert Brickey, Quin Snyder, and Phil Henderson.  Those guys were good players, but it was Ferry’s team, and he got them to the Final Four, twice in a row.

The one thing I guess you could say against him is, his competition for ACC Player of the Year was a little weak in Tom Hammonds and JR Reid.  Had he come along a little earlier, he would’ve had to deal with Johnny Dawkins and Horace Grant.  Had he come along a little later, he would’ve had to deal with Dennis Scott and Kenny Anderson.  Maybe he wouldn’t have won those two ACC POY awards.  But that’s not his fault; he could only play against the guys who were in the league at that time.  Hammonds and Reid are both Top 100 players and he was way ahead of them.

My gut says Ferry should be down in the 20-25 range, but the more I look at his accomplishments, I can’t justify it.  The bottom line is, he accomplished more than the guys he’s ahead of.  He had one of the great careers in the history of the ACC.

Ferry’s 58-point outburst against Miami in 1988 still stands as the record for points in a game by an ACC player. What I didn’t know until recently is that Ferry hit 19 straight shots in the game, which would be an NCAA record – except it was interrupted by an errant alley oop attempt that hit the rim and was counted as a missed shot.

I’d like to be one of their other four guys. Everybody is trying to guard Ferry. By the time you think you’ve got him stopped, he lays it off to somebody else. If he ain’t the player of the year, I want to see who is. – Miami coach Bill Foster, quoted in Game of My Life by Alwyn Featherston

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

I think there is a good argument that Coach K’s 1982 recruiting class of Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson, and Jay Bilas is the best class in ACC history.  Here is what they accomplished:

Year 1: 11-17 (3-11)

Year 2: 24-10 (7-7), ACC Tournament finals, lost in first round of NCAA

Year 3: 23-8 (8-6), ACC Tournament semifinals, lost in second round of NCAA

Year 4: 37-3 (12-2), ACC Tournament champs, lost in national championship

While there are classes that might have more in the way of accomplishments, I think three things set this class apart:

1. Where they started vs. where they finished.  They took the program from the bottom to the top in 3 years.
2. All four guys played for all four years.
3. It really was those four guys who got it done.  OK, Amaker contributed, throw in a little Dan Meagher and Danny Ferry, but the backbone of that 1986 team was those same four guys.

This would be unthinkable now.  Can you imagine four guys playing together for four years and elevating a program like this?  It would never happen.  Can you imagine how much Duke fans must have loved these four?  It shows you what college basketball has lost with all the roster turnover that happens nowadays.

What are some of the other best recruiting classes in terms of their accomplishments?  Here are some that come to mind.

• Duke 1997 (Brand, Battier, Avery)
• Duke 1999 (Williams, Dunleavy, Boozer)
• Duke 2002 (Redick, Williams)
• Duke 2007 (Singler, Smith, Scheyer)
• Maryland 1971 (McMillen, Elmore)
• UNC 1958 (Larese, Moe)
• UNC 1993 (Stackhouse, Wallace)
• UNC 1995 (Jamison, Carter)
• NC State 1953 (Shavlik, Molodet)
• NC State 1956 (Pucillo, Richter)
• NC State 1987 (Corchiani, Monroe)
• South Carolina 1968 (Roche, Owens)
• Wake Forest 1990 (Childress, Rogers)

I don’t think any of those can match the 1982 Duke class in terms of taking a program from the bottom to the top.

Now, back to Johnny Dawkins.  Johnny Dawkins, to me, is the epitome of all-around excellence in a basketball player.  From the day he stepped on the court, he did everything with excellence.  Excellent shooter.  Excellent passer.  Excellent defender.  Good rebounder at the guard position.  Good perimeter shooter, good penetrator, good finisher.  Made free throws.  Great leader.  Fine human being.  All-ACC.  All-American.  National Player of the Year, according to some.  ACC Tournament MOP.

All he lacks on his resume is a national championship and ACC Player of the Year.  For the first, he came up 3 points short.  For the second, he couldn’t overcome the greatness of Len Bias.  But there is nothing negative to say about Johnny Dawkins, as a ballplayer or as a person.

Have you ever looked at how great he was in the 1986 postseason?  In nine games – three in the ACC Tournament, six in the NCAA Tournament, all wins except the last – here’s what he did:

Game	Opponent	Result	Shooting	Points
ACC Quarters	Wake Forest	W, 68-60	8-14	16
ACC Semis	Virginia	W, 75-70	9-17	24
ACC Final	Georgia Tech	W, 68-67	7-14	20
NCAA First Round	Miss. Valley State	W, 85-78	11-17	27
NCAA Second Round	Old Dominion	W, 89-61	10-12	25
NCAA Sweet 16	DePaul	W, 74-67	11-20	25
NCAA Elite 8	Navy	W, 71-50	13-25	28
NCAA Final Four	Kansas	W, 71-67	11-17	24
NCAA Champ Game	Louisville	L, 72-69	10-19	24
Averages	59.4%	23.7

To have eight consecutive games with 20+ points and 50%+ shooting, in tournament play, as a guard… it would be hard to find another example.  This performance is right up there with the greatest NCAA Tournament performances in history.  It’s not remembered as such, simply because they didn’t win.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

I did not expect to find that Shane Battier was a Top 15 player.  But as I look at his accomplishments, I am forced to that conclusion.  His senior year in 2001 is one of the great years anybody ever had.  He was ACC Player of the Year, National Player of the Year, NABC Defensive Player of the Year, ACC Tournament Most Outstanding Player, NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player, and won a national championship.  I’d say that about covers it…

But that’s not all.  He was also NABC Defensive Player of the Year and a second team All-American as a junior.  The teams he played on had an overall record of 135-15, 59-5 in the ACC.  His teams went 11-1 in the ACC Tournament.  He is the only player in ACC history with 200 blocks and 200 steals.  His 2001 NCAA Tournament performance is one of the greatest ever by an ACC player.

One of the reasons for lingering doubts about Battier’s greatness is that, as I remember, he was considered a bit of a disappointment as a freshman and sophomore.  He came in as a very hyped recruit, and while he played an important role on those 1998 and 1999 teams, he clearly played a supporting role to Trajan Langdon and Elton Brand.  He was always a tremendous defender, but he wasn’t a prolific scorer, so there was a sense of “what’s with all the hype about this guy?”.  But with the departures of Brand, Langdon, Will Avery, and Corey Maggette after 1999, Battier showed that he could score, in addition to everything else he did well, and that 2000 team didn’t miss a beat.

Battier, Jason Williams, and Joseph Forte were the top three vote-getters on the 2001 AP All-America team.  As far as I can tell, that is the only time in the history of that award that the top three were from the same conference.

Battier is probably the only player in college basketball history to play in four NCAA tournaments as a #1 seed.  I can’t find another.  Gonzaga would have been a #1 in four straight tournaments had it not been for the 2020 COVID cancellation.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Sam Perkins is probably the best player in the history of college basketball who was never the best player on his own team.  He was overshadowed by James Worthy and Michael Jordan, but he was a great player in his own right – First Team All-ACC three times, Consensus First Team All-American twice.  Perkins never came close to winning ACC Player of the Year, as he had the misfortune to play at the same time as Jordan and Ralph Sampson.

Perkins in 1982 and 1983 fell victim to the anti-ACC bias shown by the AP that I have written about elsewhere.  Notice how the AP is out of step with the other services:

Vote	1982	1983	1984
AP	Nothing	3rd team	1st team
USBWA	2nd team	1st team	1st team
NABC	2nd team	2nd team	2nd team
UPI	2nd team	1st team	1st team
Consensus	2nd team	1st team	1st team

Freshmen to be named Most Outstanding Player of the ACC Tournament:

• Phil Ford, UNC, 1975
• Sam Perkins, UNC, 1981
• Jerry Stackhouse, UNC, 1994
• Jason Williams, Duke, 2000
• Brandan Wright, UNC, 2007
• Zion Williamson, Duke, 2019

Perkins was a forerunner of the modern European-style big man with great perimeter shooting touch.  He was one of the first big guys to be a proficient 3-point shooter at the NBA level.  He is the only player in ACC history with 2000 points, 1000 rebounds, 200 blocks, and 100 steals.

My friend Todd thinks that Perkins shouldn’t be ahead of Lennie Rosenbluth and Larry Miller.  It’s certainly arguable either way, but there are two main reasons I put Perkins ahead, and I’ve already mentioned them.  One is, he was a three-time All-American.  If you want to devalue that because he didn’t do as well in AP voting, OK, but I go the other way, for reasons I’ve already explained.

The other reason is, Perkins played at the same time as Sampson and Jordan.  So that pretty much eliminated any chance to be the best player in the conference.  That’s a unique set of circumstances.  No other player on this list is blocked behind two Top 10 players.  With all due respect to Larry Miller, he was competing with Bob Verga and Mike Lewis for ACC honors.  Rosenbluth’s main competition was Grady Wallace. It’s not the same.  Think about it this way: if Miller or Rosenbluth had played when Perkins did, what more do you think they would have accomplished than Perkins did?  Would they have won ACC Player of the Year over Sampson and Jordan?  Would they have done better than Perkins did in All-America or All-ACC voting?  I don’t think so.

It is true that Perkins never had that signature moment.  He was ACC Tournament MOP as a freshman, but it’s not like he scored 40 points or made a game-winning shot.  He was just his normal efficient, excellent self for three games.  That was the pattern of his entire career: quiet, efficient excellence for 135 games.  There’s a reason his teams went 117-21 and made it to two national finals.  Obviously, Worthy and Jordan had a lot to do with that, but Perkins was the constant.  Miller and Rosenbluth had brighter moments than Perkins, but if you look at the overall body of work… I just think Perkins is a little bit better.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Coming into the 1996 season, Carolina had a lot of question marks.  Jerry Stackhouse, Rasheed Wallace, and Donald Williams were gone from the 1995 Final Four team.  Jeff McInnis and Dante Calabria were the only returning starters.  Shammond Williams and Serge Zwikker hadn’t shown much.  But as usual, Dean Smith had a stellar recruiting class of Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, and Ademola Okulaja.  Carter was most highly touted of the group, making all the prep All-America teams.  But once the season started, it became apparent that Jamison was the star.

He played his way onto first team All-ACC as a freshman, one point ahead of Maryland’s Johnny Rhodes.  At the time, he was just the fourth freshman to receive that honor, the first three being Clemson’s Skip Wise, Georgia Tech’s Kenny Anderson, and Maryland’s Joe Smith.  But he didn’t stop there.  Jamison continued to expand his game, improving his free throw shooting, developing more of a perimeter game, and increasing his scoring totals.  By 1998, he was the best player in the country, making Bill Guthridge look like a genius and leading the Tar Heels to their second straight Final Four.  (ACC teams that won the ACC Tournament and made the Final Four in back-to-back years: 1963-64 Duke; 1967-68-69 UNC; 1981-82 UNC; 1997-98 UNC)

The first thing you noticed about Jamison was his unorthodox style.  He bounced around like a pogo stick out there, flipping up shots from all sorts of angles, but it seemed that all of them went in.  He was half a step and half a jump quicker than everybody else. He once scored 35 points against Duke and had the ball in his hands for a total of 53 seconds. He made himself into a shooter, progressing from a 53% free-throw shooter as a freshman to one of the top 100 three-point shooters in NBA history in terms of three-point FGs made.

Jamison as a collegian has a very similar career profile to Jason Williams.  Both three-year players; both were National Player of the Year as a junior.  Jamison I think was a little better as a freshman.  I guess you could argue that Williams was a little better as a sophomore; he was a first team All-American while Jamison was second team.  Ultimately, it’s a coin flip.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player who has the sense of presence on the court that Antawn has. His feel, his sixth sense – all of that is unprecedented. You could almost spin him like a top, blindfold him, and throw him the ball. He could shoot without looking, and it would go in. – Dave Odom, quoted in What It Means to Be a Tar Heel by Scott Fowler

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

McGuire didn’t do a lot of Xs and Os. We didn’t run plays. We just played schoolyard basketball. – Rosenbluth in What It Means to Be a Tar Heel

With apologies to Dickie Hemric and Ronnie Shavlik, Lennie Rosenbluth was the best ACC player of the 1950s.  He was the first three-time All-ACC player.  He was the first ACC player to be named first team All-America.  And of course he had that magical 1957 season where he was ACC Player of the Year, ACC Tournament Most Outstanding Player, and led the Tar Heels to the national championship.

Rosenbluth’s ACC Tournament performance that year is worth dwelling on.  In the Tar Heels’ three victories, he had 45, 23, and 38 points, for a total of 106.  That record stood until 1995 when Randolph Childress got 107.  His 45 points in the first round is still the single-game tournament scoring record.  His 38 points in the final was surpassed only by Charlie Scott’s 40 in 1969.  Rosenbluth’s performance was every bit as good in its time as Childress’ was in his.

There are a lot of national player of the year awards now, but in 1957, there were only two that I can find: the UPI and the Helms Foundation.  The UPI Player of the Year Award went to Chet Forte of Columbia, while the Helms Foundation award went to Rosenbluth.  Had the AP had an award, it seems likely based on All-America voting that it would have gone to Wilt Chamberlain.  All that to say, Chamberlain, Rosenbluth, and Forte were the three best players in the country.

If “Helms Foundation” sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen it on a banner hanging up in the Dean Dome.  I never took the time to investigate what kind of organization it is or was until now.  Here’s an interesting article.  The gist of it seems to be that the Helms “Foundation” selections were essentially the product of one person who was a big sports fan.  The selections from the earliest years such as North Carolina’s mythical 1924 “national championship” were done retroactively, as the Helms Foundation wasn’t founded until 1936.  So I think it casts some doubt on the credibility of these selections.

Would Rosenbluth be on Carolina’s all-time starting five?  Boy, that is a tough one.  The guards are easy (Ford and Jordan) and the center is easy (Hansbrough).  But the forwards?  Pick two from this list: Rosenbluth, Larry Miller, Sam Perkins, and Antawn Jamison.  If you pin me down, I’m probably going with Perkins and Rosenbluth.  When Billy Cunningham and James Worthy can’t crack your school’s second team all-time starting five, you know you’re an elite program.

From the first NCAA Tournament in 1939 through 1976, there were seven national championship teams who went undefeated: San Francisco in 1956; UNC in 1957; UCLA in 1964, 1967, 1972, and 1973; and Indiana in 1976.  It has not happened since then.  In fact, there hasn’t even been a one loss national champion.  There is no obvious (to me) reason why this should be the case.  Of course, it is very, very difficult to go undefeated, so perhaps we should turn the question around and ask how it happened seven times during that 38-year period?  Four of those teams were UCLA teams, and that 10-year period for UCLA is something unique in the history of college basketball, and seemingly not repeatable.  But even if we dismiss that as an outlier, we still have the other three.  Teams do play more games now, so that by itself decreases the chances of an undefeated season, but it’s not that big of a difference.  My guess is that what looks like a pattern is mostly due to chance.  There is no reason that a modern team couldn’t go undefeated the way that Indiana did in 1976 or UNC did in 1957.  1984 Georgetown, 1992 Duke, and 2012 Kentucky could have gone undefeated had the balls bounced a little differently.  I predict that within the next 20 years, we’ll see another undefeated team in college basketball.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Jason Williams, what a player.  I remember those Duke teams.  You felt like you had no chance to beat them, and you were right.  I especially remember the 2002 ACC Tournament final, which I was fortunate enough to attend.  NC State was coming off a huge win over eventual national champion Maryland in the semifinal.  Duke absolutely blew their doors off in a 91-61 win.  That was actually closer than their previous meeting, a 108-71 Duke win.  That 2002 Duke team was the only team in the 21 years of kenpom ratings to be both the best offensive and defensive team in the country.  I still have no idea how they lost to Indiana in the Sweet 16.  I had forgotten what happened at the end of that game.  Duke was down by four, and Williams buried a three… and got fouled… and missed the free throw.  Carlos Boozer got the rebound, probably got fouled on the putback but it wasn’t called, and that was the ballgame.

Here’s a stat.  Williams played for three years.  Guess what his record was against State, Carolina, and Wake?  23-1.  I don’t know how I would prove this without a lot of painstaking manual work, but it’s hard to imagine that anybody else in ACC history had a .958 winning percentage against the rest of the Big Four.

Looking at Williams’ accolades, a couple of things stand out.  He came in at the same time as UNC’s Joseph Forte, and through their first two years, I think you’d have to say that Forte was ahead by a nose.  He edged out Williams 48-43 in ACC Rookie of the Year voting, and did a bit better in All-ACC voting as well.  The next year, Williams, Forte, and Shane Battier were all unanimous first-team All-ACC, and they were the top three vote-getters for AP All-American as well.  But Battier and Forte each received 32 votes for ACC Player of the Year, with Williams getting 8.  In AP National Player of the Year voting, Williams and Forte finished tied for third behind Battier and Jamaal Tinsley of Iowa State.  In Wooden Award voting, Williams and Forte finished second and third behind Battier.

In 2002, Forte was in the NBA and Williams won National Player of the Year.  Williams did not, however, win ACC Player of the Year, as that honor went to Juan Dixon by a narrow margin.

To summarize, Williams was a two-time first team All-American and a National Player of the Year.  For me, that means automatic Top 20.  Williams is the only major conference player in college basketball with multiple 20+ point, 5+ assist seasons in the past 30 years.  He never lost an ACC Tournament game.  He is one of six freshmen to be named Most Outstanding Player of the ACC Tournament (the others are Phil Ford, Sam Perkins, Jerry Stackhouse, Brandan Wright, and Zion Williamson).  He is one of six three-year players to reach 2,000 career points (the others are David Thompson, Len Chappell, Lennie Rosenbluth, Charlie Scott, and Dennis Scott).

It’s fascinating (if fruitless) to speculate about what Williams’ NBA career would have been like.  He didn’t have a great rookie year, but you have to think that with his skill, athletic ability, and IQ, he would’ve eventually been an All-Star caliber player.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

It’s hard to remember that there was a time when Mike Krzyzewski was not the coach at Duke, but Mike Gminski remembers.  He played in the last four years of the Bill Foster era.  Foster was hired in 1974, inheriting a mess from Neill McGeachy and Bucky Waters.  His first three years, no improvement was evident.  But over a three-year period between 1976 and 1978, Foster added Jim Spanarkel, Gminski, Gene Banks, and Kenny Dennard, and in 1978 everything suddenly came together.  After going 2-10 in the ACC the previous year, the Devils got national attention by beating second-ranked UNC in January, went on to finish second in the ACC regular season, and ran through the ACC Tournament to claim the title.  Suddenly the Devils were a Top 10 team, and they rode that momentum all the way to the national championship game, where they lost to top-ranked Kentucky. 

The next year, with everyone back, plus heralded recruit Vince Taylor, the Blue Devils were preseason #1.  But as so often happens in sports, the next step was never taken.  Duke stumbled out of the gate, ripped off 11 out of 12 to get to 17-3, then dropped 3 more games down the stretch.  Still ranked #6 going into the NCAA Tournament, they were matched up with a St. John’s team that had already beaten them in the regular season. This time, the Blue Devils were without the injured Bob Bender and Kenny Dennard, and the Redmen pulled out a two-point win. Just like that, the Devils were done.

Despite the loss of Spanarkel, the Devils were preseason #3 going into Gminski’s senior season.  They got to #1 after wins over #2 Kentucky and #6 UNC, but again stumbled in ACC play, culminating in a 4-game losing streak in February that saw their ranking dip to #17.  But they pulled it together for an incredible 3-game run during the ACC Tournament.  However, before the NCAA Tournament began, Foster announced that he was leaving Duke to go to South Carolina.  He continued coaching through the NCAA Tournament, and the team responded well, winning their first game, then beating Kentucky at Rupp Arena in the Sweet 16.  But in the regional final, they lost to Joe Barry Carroll and the Purdue Boilermakers, and that’s how it ended for the G-Man.

Gminski had a great career.  Turned around a program, went to the national championship game, won 2 ACC Tournaments, ACC Player of the Year as a junior.  As a senior, Gminski statistically was even better, but Duke as a team was viewed as a disappointment, and POY went to Albert King of regular season champion Maryland.  He was a walking double-double and, with Tyler Hansbrough, is one of two players in the Top 10 in ACC career scoring and rebounding.  He was Consensus First Team All-American as a junior, and second team as a senior (which was bogus, as I wrote about here). Gminski was a rare recruiting misjudgment by Dean Smith, who thought he was too slow to be successful.

A lesser known skill of Gminski’s was not fouling.  In his ACC career, he committed only 240 fouls, a remarkably low number for a big man who played pretty much every minute of every game for 4 years.  In his NBA career, he played 938 games and fouled out exactly once.