Mudville Analytics

2003 Top 50 List: No

Dan Collins List: Yes

Dave Odom inherited a Wake Forest program that had been way down under Bob Staak.  But Staak did leave him a couple of good young players in Anthony Tucker and Hobbton High School’s own Chris King.  Odom promptly went out and recruited Rodney Rogers and Randolph Childress, and he got things turned around quickly.

1991 was Rogers’ and Childress’ freshman year, and the Deacons improved markedly to go 19-11.  They made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1984, losing in the second round to a very good Alabama team.  They had almost everyone coming back in 1992.  It had the makings of a breakthrough year, but it wound up as a “what might have been” year.  Childress tore his ACL over the summer and missed the entire season.  Wake still had an OK year, but you know it could have been so much more with Childress.  Childress was back in 1993, and the Deacons did take a step forward, finishing 10-6 in the ACC and making the Sweet 16 on their way to a final ranking of 16.  In 1994, they added Tim Duncan, but Rogers was gone, leaving early for the NBA.  I would’ve paid to see a team with Rogers, Childress, and Duncan.

Rogers played three seasons in the ACC, during a time when the ACC was hands down the best conference in college basketball.  In fact, an ACC team won the national championship all three of those years.  His contemporaries included Christian Laettner, Grant Hill, Bobby Hurley, George Lynch, Eric Montross, Bryant Stith, Walt Williams, Tom Gugliotta, Randolph Childress, and Sam Cassell.

It is my contention that Rogers is underrated. He wasn’t on the 2003 Top 50 list. That to me is an injustice. Here’s a guy who won ACC Player of the Year in 1993 over Bobby Hurley, in Hurley’s senior year (not to mention over Lynch, Montross, and Grant Hill).  Think of how easy it would have been for the voters to favor Hurley, not only because Hurley was really good, but also as a kind of lifetime achievement award for all that he and his teams had achieved in his four years.  And yet, Rogers won.  All-American was different, as Hurley was first team, Rogers second team (he finished sixth in the voting), but we’ve seen that movie before, haven’t we? I mean of course Bobby Hurley was going to be first team All-American, because all the voters had watched him win a couple of national championships. But the ACC sportswriters who watched them closely in 1993 said that Rogers was better. (Admittedly, the POY vote was very close. Rogers won 51-47, with Lynch and Montross getting 2 votes each.)

And it wasn’t just that year; Rogers was ACC Rookie of the Year as a freshman over Grant Hill; in fact he was named National Freshman of the Year by the USBWA. He made first team All-ACC as a sophomore.  Rogers and Horace Grant are the only two ACC players in the top 25 in career FG% who also led the league in scoring. Rogers is one of only 10 players to win both ACC Rookie and Player of the Year (Mike Gminski, Ralph Sampson, Michael Jordan, Dennis Scott, Joe Smith, Joseph Forte, Jahlil Okafor, Marvin Bagley, and Zion Williamson are the others).  He scored in double figures in 86 of his 89 career games and had nine points the other three times.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

It is difficult to overstate how bad Virginia was through the first 17 years of the ACC.  Here’s a quick rundown:

• Losing record in the ACC every year – 17-for-17
• 60-169 cumulative ACC record
• 22-123 record against the Big Four – 5-34 against Duke, 5-29 against Wake, 6-30 against UNC, 6-30 against NC State.  (It was 1976, UVa’s 23^rd year in the ACC, before they defeated each of the Big Four in the same season)
• 22 consecutive losses to Duke from 1959 to 1968
• 3-17 record in the ACC Tournament, never reached a final

But in 1971 things started to change.  The Cavaliers achieved a 15-11 overall record – their first winning record since 1954 – and notched wins over nationally ranked Duke and South Carolina during the regular season.  This set the stage for 1972, when Virginia finally broke through, going 21-7, 8-4 in the ACC, reaching the NIT, and achieving a Top 10 national ranking before finishing at #20.  How did the Cavaliers finally get over the hump?  The simple answer is Barry Parkhill.

Parkhill was the ACC’s leading scorer and became the first Virginia player to be named ACC Player of the Year.  He barely missed first team All-American.  In 1973, much of Parkhill’s supporting cast was gone, and he struggled at times, dropping to second team All-ACC.  But the Cavaliers’ biggest problem that year was having to play 7 games against NC State, Maryland, and North Carolina – three of the five best teams in the country.

Hoot Gibson coached one more year before giving way to Terry Holland.  It was 1979 before the Cavaliers had their second winning season in the ACC.  Then Ralph Sampson arrived and they were on their way.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: No

Elton Brand was another of the great “two-and-done” players in ACC history.  I’ve previously listed Jerry Stackhouse, Chris Paul, and Joseph Forte, and you can probably guess that Kenny Anderson and Joe Smith are still to come.  Brand won all the national player of the year awards as a sophomore.  What’s interesting about his career is that he flew under the radar a bit coming into that year.  He was great as a freshman, but he was on an incredible team and had to battle for playing time.  Then he broke his foot in December and missed 17 games.  As a result, he didn’t even make the ACC All-Freshman team.  But it was clear to anyone who was watching that Brand was a special talent. 

Sports Reference has a statistic called “Win Shares” which attempts to quantify the degree to which a player has contributed to his team’s wins.  Since they started computing this stat in 1995-96, there are only 3 10-Win Share seasons in the ACC:

• Tim Duncan, 1996-97
• Shane Battier, 2000-01
• Elton Brand, 1998-99

What are the greatest teams in ACC history to NOT win the national championship?  Sports Reference has a team rating system called the Simple Rating System (SRS) which uses margin of victory and strength of schedule to rate teams.  The following teams were #1 in the SRS ratings but failed to win it all.  I will rank those teams in order of quality (my opinion):

1. Duke, 1998-99 (37-2, 16-0)

This team was ridiculous.  Their top 6 players were Elton Brand (national POY), Trajan Langdon, Will Avery, Corey Maggette, Chris Carrawell, and Shane Battier.  They lost an early season game to Cincinnati and didn’t lose again until the national championship against UConn.  Had this team won that game, they would be remembered as one of the greatest teams in the history of college basketball.

2. UNC, 1983-84 (28-3, 14-0)

Starting lineup: Michael Jordan (national POY), Sam Perkins, Brad Daugherty, Matt Doherty, Kenny Smith.  Yeah I’d say that’s pretty good… this team was ranked #1 wire to wire.  They lost a single regular season game to Arkansas.  But they slipped up and lost to Duke in the ACC Tournament semifinals, then lost to an inferior Indiana team led by Steve Alford in the Sweet 16.

3. Duke, 1997-98 (32-4, 15-1)

Same top 6 players as the 1998-99 team, save replacing Corey Maggette with Roshown McLeod.  And throw in Steve Wojciechowski.  The record is slightly less impressive than the ’99 team; they were ranked #1 some of the year, but not all, and they got spanked a couple of times by UNC.  Lost a 2 point game to Kentucky in the regional final.

4. UNC, 1986-87 (32-4, 14-0)

Starting lineup: Kenny Smith, J.R. Reid, Joe Wolf, Jeff Lebo, Dave Popson.  Ranzino Smith, Steve Bucknall, Curtis Hunter, and Scott Williams off the bench.  After coasting through the regular season, lost to Vinny Del Negro and NC State in one of the biggest upsets in ACC Tournament history.  Then lost a close one to #10 Syracuse in the regional final. 

5. Duke, 2001-02 (31-4, 13-3)

Starting lineup: Jason Williams, Carlos Boozer, Mike Dunleavy, Dahntay Jones, Chris Duhon.  Ranked #1 most of the season until losing a couple of games in late February.  Upset by Indiana in the Sweet 16.

6. Duke, 2003-04 (31-6, 13-3)

The starting lineup here was JJ Redick, Luol Deng, Daniel Ewing, Shelden Williams, and Chris Duhon.  They were ranked #1 for most of January, but lost a few down the stretch.  They lost an incredible ACC Tournament final to Maryland in overtime, then made the Final Four, where they lost to eventual champion UConn by a point.

7. UNC, 2006-07 (31-7, 11-5)

This was a very good team, but not a great one.  The starting lineup was Hansbrough, Brandan Wright, Wayne Ellington, Ty Lawson, and Reyshawn Terry, with Danny Green off the bench.  They went 31-7 overall and were not ranked #1 for most of the season.  They stumbled a bit down the stretch, won the ACC Tournament, but lost in the regional final to Georgetown.

8. UNC, 1985-86 (28-6, 10-4)

Starting lineup: Brad Daugherty, Kenny Smith, Steve Hale, Joe Wolf, Jeff Lebo/Dave Popson/Warren Martin.  This team started 21-0 and was #1 all year long, and then the wheels came off.  They lost 3 of their last 4 regular season games, lost in the first round of the ACC Tournament, then lost in the Sweet 16 to eventual champion Louisville.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

This one is personal for me.  I grew up an NC State fan, and Rodney Monroe, Chris Corchiani, and Tom Gugliotta are the players I remember best.  I think many Wolfpack fans look back on this era with – not just with fondness, but something akin to reverence, out of proportion to the actual success these teams had.  In Monroe’s years, NC State didn’t win an ACC Tournament and didn’t make it past the Sweet 16.  I think there are a couple of reasons for the intensity of feeling that NC State fans have for this era.

One, these teams, and players, were exceedingly fun to watch.  They played an up tempo style, made shots, and scored a lot of points.  Corchiani and Monroe were a perfect pair – the fiery, tough, smart floor general Corchiani, and the cool, understated, sweet-shooting Monroe.

But the biggest reason is that looking back, NC State fans now understand that this was the end of an era.  Through 1991, NC State was one of the ten best programs in the history of college basketball.  Since 1991, they haven’t been one of the 50 best.  It’s almost as if when Monroe and Corchiani left the program, they took the excellence, the pride, and the history with them.

Of particular significance to fans, 1991 also marked the end of the era when NC State was on a similar level with Duke and North Carolina.  During Monroe and Corchiani’s careers, NC State went 8-10 against their biggest rivals.  Nobody owns Dean Smith and Mike Krzyzewski, but it was competitive.  When you played one of those teams at home, you expected to win.  No matter where you played them, you knew you were going to compete, and you didn’t worry about getting embarrassed.

Monroe as a player is one of the greatest scorers in ACC history.  He is the ACC’s fourth all-time leading scorer behind Tyler Hansbrough, JJ Redick, and Johnny Dawkins.  He trails only Hansbrough and Redick in career 20-point games.  He is sixth all-time in career 30-point games and is the only player from the last 45 years in the top six.  Only Len Chappell (50) and Dickie Hemric (49) scored more in an ACC game than Monroe’s 48 against Georgia Tech in 1991.  Monroe is third all-time in three-point FG%, shooting 43.6% for his career.  His 27 points per game in 1991 has not been reached by an ACC player since.

Monroe did better among ACC voters than he did nationally.  He was first team All-ACC in 1989 as a sophomore.  In his junior year, he barely missed, finishing sixth in the voting.  His performance didn’t dip at all; he probably lost some votes because the Wolfpack had a somewhat disappointing year in Jim Valvano’s last season.  As a senior, Monroe was named ACC Player of the Year over Kenny Anderson and Christian Laettner.  Anderson and Laettner did better in All-America voting, which is understandable; both of them had been to the Final Four the previous year, so they came into the year with a lot of hype, plus they were great players, of course.

2003 Top 50 List: No

Dan Collins List: Yes

When I first started researching this project, one of the first things I looked at was the 2003 Top 50 list created by ACC area sportswriters.  The two omissions that surprised me most were Rod Griffin of Wake Forest and Bob Verga of Duke.

Verga’s case is simple. He was a three-time first team All-ACC, two-time All-American player who missed being ACC Player of the Year by two votes in 1967.  The only player with a comparable resume who isn’t in my Top 50 is Trajan Langdon, but I think Verga’s resume is stronger than Langdon’s.  Langdon was not a serious contender for ACC Player of the Year; Verga lost a 52-48 vote to Larry Miller of UNC.  Verga was unanimous first team All-ACC; Langdon was not.

The 1966 national championship game between UTEP and Kentucky is remembered for its racial storylines against the backdrop of the civil rights movement.  What’s isn’t as well-remembered is that Kentucky beat Duke in the semifinals to advance to that game.  Verga, who had been named the Most Outstanding Player of the East Region, was weakened by the flu and scored just four points.  Had Verga been healthy, there’s a good chance it would have been Duke playing the Miners instead.

There is an ongoing debate in “Duke circles” about whether Verga’s jersey should be retired.  I don’t have a strong opinion about it; for me, he is right around the cut line.  All the players whose jerseys are retired rank higher than Verga on my list, but if you were going to retire another, Verga or Elton Brand would be next in line for me.  (I don’t know if Brand has finished his degree; if not, he wouldn’t be eligible.)

2003 Top 50 List: Harpring Yes; Stith No

Dan Collins List: Yes

Bryant Stith and Matt Harpring are very, very similar.

• Both were outstanding as freshmen
• Both made first-team All-ACC three times (only 25 players have done that)
• Neither was ACC Player of the Year or came close
• Neither did well in All-America voting (Harpring was 3^rd team AP All-America in 1998, that’s it)
• Both piled up a ton of career stats – 2000+ points, 800+ rebounds
• Neither ever played on a really good team
• Both reached one ACC Tournament final and lost

These were players who flew under the radar screen nationally.  They never had a lot of hype.  They did better among ACC voters than national voters.  Just consistent excellence for four years.  Stith, in fact, is perhaps the most consistent player in ACC history.  Look at the stats for his last three seasons:

Season	School	Conf	G	FG%	FT%	TRB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV	PF	PTS
1989-90	Virginia	ACC	32	0.481	0.777	6.9	1.7	1.3	0.3	1.9	2	20.8
1990-91	Virginia	ACC	33	0.471	0.791	6.2	1.2	1.5	0.6	2.5	2.5	19.8
1991-92	Virginia	ACC	33	0.452	0.815	6.6	2.2	1.2	0.4	2	2.4	20.7

Stith is fifth on the all-time ACC scoring list behind Tyler Hansbrough, JJ Redick, Johnny Dawkins, and Rodney Monroe.  Harpring fell three rebounds short of 1,000, just missing joining Tim Duncan, Ralph Sampson, Mike Gminski, Tyler Hansbrough, Len Chappell, Sam Perkins, Christian Laettner, Kyle Singler, and Danny Ferry in the 2,000 points/1,000 rebounds club.

Stith ended his career as a champion – of the NIT.  The 1992 Cavaliers won five straight games to win it.  Stith was named MVP.  Only four other ACC teams have won the NIT championship: UNC in 1971; Maryland in 1972; Virginia in 1980; and Wake Forest in 2000.

2003 Top 50 List: No

Dan Collins List: Yes

The arrival of Jim Spanarkel in the 1976 season was the first step towards the late 1970s Duke surge under Bill Foster, culminating in an unexpected run to the national championship game in 1978.  Spanarkel was ACC Rookie of the Year as a freshman; second team All-ACC as a sophomore, narrowly missing first team; and first team All-ACC as a junior and senior.  Spanarkel was also Most Outstanding Player of the ACC Tournament as a junior. Spanarkel was a high school teammate of Mike O’Koren.

He was never the best player in the league, but he was a really good player for four years.  He scored over 2,000 points in his career.  He ranks ninth in career steals.  He shot 53% from the floor and 81% from the line.  He was a second team All-American as a senior.  He made huge contributions to great teams.  He’s one of the best players who wasn’t named to the 2003 ACC’s 50 Greatest Players Team.

Spanarkel’s numbers dropped significantly between his junior and senior years.  He went from 20.8 points/game to 15.9.  Why did this happen?  His FG% and FT% dropped a bit, but most of the drop was a result of fewer attempts.  Taking a closer look at the numbers, it wasn’t just Spanarkel; the whole Duke team slowed way down between 1978 and 1979:

	FGA/Game	FTA/game	Points/Game
1977-78	62.7	24.7	85.6
1978-79	55.0	22.1	71.9

Duke was an extreme example, but the same thing happened across the league. The league average went from 81 points/game to 75 points/game.  I don’t have an explanation for why this happened.  I’m not able to find a rule change that would have driven it.

The radical change in Duke’s numbers is even stranger.  Here you have a team that is coming off an incredible season, returning everybody, and their tempo changes dramatically the following year.  Maybe teams started playing slowdown against them.

About the only thing he will do for you is win. He’s not very fast or quick, can’t jump, and is not a very good shooter. But when the other team presses, we give him the ball. When we need a basket, we give him the ball. If we’re having trouble stopping a big man, we put him on that guy. If we’re having trouble with a guard, we put him on that guy. – Spanarkel’s high school coach, quoted in The Blue Divide by Johnny Moore and Art Chansky

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

Dennis Scott’s 1990 season is one of the truly special, remarkable seasons in ACC history.  I was 15 at the time, and I remember just being in awe of what he was doing.  Looking back on it as an analyst rather than a fan, it still looks amazing.

When it comes to great scorers, you’re looking for two things.  You’re looking for guys who score a lot, and who score efficiently.  There are guys who score a lot because they take a lot of shots, and there are guys who score efficiently because they only shoot when they’re wide open under the basket.  But when you put them together, that’s a special scorer.

Scott in 1990 averaged 27.7 points per game, and his True Shooting Percentage was 59.3%.  To put that in context, I searched sports-reference.com for other seasons in college basketball where a player averaged 27+ points and had a True Shooting Percentage of 59% or above.  In the past 30 years for which they have data, there have been 14 such seasons.  The most notable are:

• 1993, JR Rider, UNLV, 29.1 PPG, 61.7 TS%
• 1995, Kurt Thomas, TCU, 28.9 PPG, 59.1 TS%
• 2006, Adam Morrison, Gonzaga, 28.1 PPG, 60.5 TS%
• 2009, Steph Curry, Davidson, 28.6 PPG, 60.4 TS%
• 2011, Jimmer Fredette, BYU, 28.9 PPG, 59.4 TS%

And it’s worth noting that none of those seasons, as great as they are, was compiled against the ACC of 1990.  Let’s list it again, but this time, I’ll include Scott’s season, and I’ll also include the team’s strength of schedule according to sports-reference:

• 1990, Dennis Scott, Georgia Tech, 27.7 PPG, 59.3 TS%, 14^th of 292
• 1993, JR Rider, UNLV, 29.1 PPG, 61.7 TS%, 47^th of 298
• 1995, Kurt Thomas, TCU, 28.9 PPG, 59.1 TS%, 132^nd of 302
• 2006, Adam Morrison, Gonzaga, 28.1 PPG, 60.5 TS%, 31^st of 326
• 2009, Steph Curry, Davidson, 28.6 PPG, 60.4 TS%, 69^th of 330
• 2011, Jimmer Fredette, BYU, 28.9 PPG, 59.4 TS%, 62^nd of 345

So when you consider everything – the volume of scoring, the efficiency of scoring, the strength of the competition –Dennis Scott’s 1990 season is one of the great scoring seasons in college basketball history.

Is there another season in the ACC to compare to it?  I think there are a few.  Here are the ones that stand out to me:

• 1962, Len Chappell, 30.1 PPG, 59.8 TS%, 34^th of 178
• 1966, Bob Lewis, 27.4 PPG, 59.8 TS%, 10^th of 181
• 1971, Charlie Davis, 26.5 PPG, 56.4 TS%, 13^th of 203
• 1975, David Thompson, 29.9 PPG, 57.5 TS%, 1^st of 234
• 1990, Dennis Scott, 27.7 PPG, 59.3 TS%, 14^th of 292
• 1991, Rodney Monroe, 27.0 PPG, 57.4 TS%, 23^rd of 295
• 1992, Walt Williams, 26.8 PPG, 59.5 TS%, 45^th of 298
• 2006, JJ Redick, 26.8 PPG, 63 TS%, 6^th of 326
• 2013, Erick Green, 25.0 PPG, 59.2 TS%, 49^th of 347

Looking at the list, I think the best seasons in addition to Scott are Chappell, Lewis, Thompson, and Redick, in no particular order.

That 1990 team was the famous “Lethal Weapon 3” Georgia Tech team with Scott, Kenny Anderson, and Brian Oliver that won the ACC Tournament and made it to the Final Four.  Scott had some monster games along the way, including 40 in the regional final against Minnesota to send the Jackets to the Final Four.  Everyone remembers how UNLV destroyed Duke in the final that year, but do you remember the semifinal?  Georgia Tech was not intimidated.  Scott had 20 in the first half, and the Jackets led 53-46.  In the second half, Stacey Augmon tightened the defense on Scott.  UNLV made an early run to grab the lead and went on to win by nine.

Scott wasn’t a one-year wonder either.  He was the ACC Rookie of the Year in 1988, and averaged 20 PPG in 1989, yet somehow failed to make All-ACC, finishing behind the likes of Steve Bucknall and Kevin Madden.  He is still all over the ACC record books.  Highest scoring average (27.7) in a season since David Thompson in 1975; most points (970) in a single season; most three-pointers (11) in a game; third in career three-pointers made (and in only three seasons), 351; 11^th in career three-point percentage (42.2%); most three-pointers (3.6) made per game, career; longest streak (69) of consecutive games with a three-pointer; second-most three-pointers in a season (137).  I mentioned in the Trajan Langdon post that Scott is, in my opinion, the greatest three-point shooter in ACC history.

I’m not sure Scott received the recognition he deserved nationally for his accomplishments.  He made second team All-American in 1990, which seems like an injustice considering how great a season he had.  Then again, when you look at who did make it, it’s hard to see who you would leave off.  The Sporting News named him their national player of the year.  He may have suffered from some vote splitting, considering how good Anderson and Oliver were.  And the timing of the vote probably hurt him as well; both the AP and UPI at the time voted before the conference tournaments.

2003 Top 50 List: Not eligible

Dan Collins List: Not eligible

If you want a shortcut way to identify the best players in ACC history, look for players who were consensus first or second team All-America more than once.  Those players, and there are 31 of them, are probably going to be in the top 50, and they’re going to include almost all of the top 25 or so.  Malcolm Brogdon is one of those 31 players.  After a lot of thought, I’m coming down on the side of Brogdon being a borderline top 50 player.  An outstanding player, but near the bottom of that list of 31 two-time All-Americans.  There is a lot to be said for him, and a little to be said against him, so let me try to lay it out.

Brogdon is unique in that his case is built largely on defensive value that is difficult to measure.  I don’t think he would be even a Top 100 player purely based on his numbers.  To support that, let’s do a blind comparison of Brogdon’s sophomore/junior/senior numbers with another guard who played at the same time, reordering their seasons to make the similarity more apparent:

Player 1	G	TS%	Reb	Ast	Stl	Blk	TO	PTS
Year 1	37	54.5%	5.4	2.7	1.2	0.1	1.4	12.7
Year 2	34	54.5%	3.9	2.4	0.7	0.4	1.7	14
Year 3	37	58.5%	4.1	3.1	0.9	0.2	1.4	18.2
Totals	108	55.8%	4.5	2.8	1	0.3	1.5	15

Player 2	G	TS%	Reb	Ast	Stl	Blk	TO	PTS
Year 1	34	53.7%	2.5	3.8	1.1	0.4	1.2	12.6
Year 2	38	57.0%	2.9	4.5	1.7	0.2	1.9	14.1
Year 3	34	59.2%	3.2	4.2	1.5	0.2	2.1	17.5
Totals	106	56.6%	2.9	4.2	1.5	0.3	1.8	14.7

Look closely.  Who would you rather have?  Player 1 is a better rebounder; player 2 is more of a playmaker.  Player 2 generated more steals.  Other than that, they’re about as even as you can get.  Again, they played in the same conference at the exact same time.

Player 1 is Brogdon.  Player 2 is Marcus Paige.  Marcus Paige was a good player, but I don’t think anyone is pleading his case as one of the 100 greatest players in ACC history.  Part of that is that Paige peaked as a sophomore and went downhill after that, which is why I put his seasons in a different order.  But my point is, there is essentially no difference between Brogdon and Paige purely on the basis of numbers.  Brogdon’s advantage is his (mostly unmeasurable) defense.

And unlike most good defensive guards, he didn’t generate a lot of steals, because that’s not the kind of defense that Virginia plays.  So how do we really know that Brogdon was a great defender?  Well, we know two things.  One, we know that Virginia was a great defensive team, and that is measurable.  So clearly someone on the Cavaliers was playing great defense.  And we know that observers consistently named Brogdon as an outstanding individual defender.  He was first team ACC All-Defense as a junior, and he was ACC and national Defensive Player of the Year as a senior.

At the risk of getting too nerdy, I will point out a couple of things about Brogdon’s NBA career, and what it can tell us about whether he is, in fact, a great defender.  The two most common ways of measuring individual defensive contributions are through box score stats and on/off analysis.  Box score stats are exactly what you would think – steals, blocks, defensive rebounds, things you can identify from a box score.  On/off analysis compares how the team plays defense when the player is on the court versus when the player is off the court.  If you look at NBA advanced metrics, Brogdon doesn’t show as a good defender in terms of box score stats, but he shows as an above-average defender in terms of on/off analysis.  This seems consistent with his college record – he really is a player who does things on defense that don’t show up in the box score but help the team win.

I have no reason to doubt that Brogdon was as good a defender as everybody said he was.  Heck, I watched him, and I thought he was great, too.  I’m just pointing out that aspect of his game is hard to measure and therefore quite subjective.

As for Brogdon’s All-America accolades, they aren’t quite as impressive as they look.  As a junior, he made second team AP, but he was 10^th in the voting, finishing just two points ahead of Buddy Hield.  As a senior, he made first team, but he was 5^th in the voting, just four points ahead of Jakob Poeltl.  So with just the slightest change in the voting, he could’ve been third team and second team, rather than second team and first team.

What does it all add up to?  Certainly a great player, worthy of consideration for the Top 50.  But I can’t get behind him as a Top 30-type player. 

2003 Top 50 List: Not eligible

Dan Collins List: Yes

I know I say this a lot, but Kyle Singler is tough to rank.  There is a lot to be said both for and against his candidacy.

The case against Singler can be summed up by saying that there is nothing in his playing record that indicates that he was thought of by his contemporaries as an elite player.  He never finished higher than fourth in All-ACC balloting.  He never received support for ACC Player of the Year.  He was not a Consensus All-American.  He was a second team NABC All-American in 2011, but he wasn’t named by the other services, and to be honest, the NABC is the one I trust the least.  College basketball coaches don’t have time to figure out who the best players in the country are.

In All-ACC balloting, Singler routinely finished behind other players who aren’t on the list – Trevor Booker, Malcolm Delaney, Jordan Williams.  In fact, he finished behind Delaney in both 2010 and 2011, which raises the very valid question of why Singler is on the list but Delaney isn’t.  Singler wasn’t even the best player on Duke’s team according to voters; Gerald Henderson, Jon Scheyer, and Nolan Smith did better in All-ACC and All-America balloting in 2009, 2010, and 2011 respectively. 

But he has a case.  He was ACC Rookie of the Year.  He was All-ACC all four years, one of only seven players to do that.  He was first team ACC All-Tournament three times, one of only thirteen players to do that.  He was named Most Outstanding Player of the 2010 ACC Tournament.  He led the 2010 team to the national championship and was named Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four.  He played more minutes than any player in ACC history.  He is eighth among ACC players in career scoring all-time.  His teams won 125 games over four years.  He is, along with Christian Laettner, Danny Ferry, and Tim Duncan, one of four players in ACC history with 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds, and 200 assists.

The real difficulty with Singler is distilling his individual accomplishments from the collective accomplishments of the teams he played on.  There is no doubt that Singler received a lot of opportunities that other players didn’t because he played on great teams with other great players; however, there is also no doubt that Singler made the most of those opportunities and helped Duke hang some banners as a result.

Gene Banks is a pretty good comp for Singler.  Excellent as a freshman, made All-ACC all four years, never considered the best player in the conference or an elite player nationally, played on really good teams with other really good players (Spanarkel, Gminski).  But I rate Singler higher because of his ACC and NCAA Tournament accolades.

I do have a nagging feeling that the deck is stacked a little too much in favor of the players from these elite programs.  Perhaps Trevor Booker was just as good as Kyle Singler.  Perhaps if we went back in time and Booker and Singler switched teams, we’d be talking about Booker right now as a Top 100 player.  We’ll never know.  We have to judge the players on what they did, not what they might have done had circumstances been different.