Tag: ACC

Record: 27-5, 12-2 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national semifinal
Final AP Ranking: 4
All-ACC Players: Charlie Scott (1st), Bill Bunting (1st), Dick Grubar (2nd)
All-Americans: Charlie Scott (2nd)

This was the third of three straight ACC Championship and Final Four teams at North Carolina. Larry Miller was gone, but the Tar Heels still had Charlie Scott, and they had three outstanding seniors in Rusty Clark, Dick Grubar, and Bill Bunting.

This trio isn’t as well known as they ought to be. They never lost an ACC Tournament game; they won the ACC regular season three times; at no time was any of their teams ranked outside the Top 10; and they reached the Final Four three times. Each of the three made All-ACC once. They were overshadowed to some degree by two all-time greats in Miller and Scott, but they were special players in their own right.

This team rolled along like a machine. They started the year ranked second in the polls and never dropped below fourth. A narrow loss to St. John’s at Madison Square Garden, a two-point game against South Carolina, and a loss to Duke in Vic Bubas’ last home game at Cameron were the only blemishes on a 22-3 regular season.

The ACC Tournament is remembered for Charlie Scott‘s 40-point game in the final against Duke. It was right up there with Randolph Childress 1995 as one of the all-time great performances in a tournament final. The other significant event in the tournament was an injury to Grubar that would keep him out of the NCAA Tournament. This meant more time for Eddie Fogler, Jim Delany (the same Jim Delany who was later commissioner of the Big Ten), and Gerald Tuttle.

On to the East Region in the NCAA Tournament. UNC as the ACC champion received a bye into the regional semifinals and a matchup with #9 Duquesne, where the Tar Heels survived a second-half Dukes comeback to eke out a one-point win. Next up was fifth-ranked Davidson in a rematch of the regional final from the prior year, won narrowly by the Tar Heels. This year’s Wildcats had beaten four ACC teams during the regular season in what turned out to be Lefty Driesell’s last season before taking the Maryland job. It was a thrilling, high scoring, back-and-forth game. In the end, there was a little too much Charlie Scott. The New York junior scored a game-high 32 and sank the decisive jumper with two seconds left. It was an especially bitter pill for Driesell, who had recruited Scott hard and was thought to have the inside track before a late push by Dean Smith convinced Scott to come to Chapel Hill.

In the Final Four, Carolina faced sixth-ranked Purdue, led by first team All-American Rick Mount. This is where Grubar’s absence finally caught up with the Tar Heels. Purdue’s backcourt of Mount and Bill Keller dominated Fogler and Tuttle, outscoring them 56-6 and forcing them into 12 turnovers. The Boilermakers pulled away in the second half to a 92-65 victory.

This team played fast. Their average of 89 points per game still ranks in the top 20 all-time in the ACC. They set league records for total field goals made (later broken by 1973 UNC) and field goals per game (later broken by 1973 NC State).

With Grubar injured, there was a built-in excuse to fail to make it to another Final Four. But they found a way, capping off an unmatched three-year run. No other ACC program has ever had a three-year stretch of winning the regular season, winning the tournament, and making the Final Four.

Record: 31-6, 13-3 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national semifinal
Final AP Ranking: 6
All-ACC Players: Chris Duhon (1st), JJ Redick (2nd), Shelden Williams (2nd), Luol Deng (3rd)
All-Americans: None

These Duke teams are starting to run together. But this edition was really good. They had balanced scoring with all five starters (JJ Redick, Luol Deng, Shelden Williams, Chris Duhon, and Daniel Ewing) averaging double figures. This was the sophomore version of Redick and Williams – good, but not as good as they would be later. Duhon was the point guard, the spiritual and defensive leader, and the energy guy (Jay Williams said of Duhon “it was like he drank a million Red Bulls”). Off the bench the Blue Devils featured sophomores Shavlik Randolph and Sean Dockery.

The Blue Devils were the nation’s best team according to kenpom. They did it on both ends, featuring the second-most efficient offense and third best defense. If they had a weakness, it was defensive rebounding. In fact, one of the themes of the Redick-Williams era Duke teams was their poor defensive rebounding. Williams himself was a great rebounder, but nobody else was. They never really found that second big man, and that would eventually come back to haunt them.

They stumbled early in a loss to Purdue, then proceeded to win 18 straight, ascending to the top of the AP poll. The ACC that year was absolutely brutal, with seven out of nine teams ranked in kenpom’s Top 30. Eventually the Blue Devils had to lose a few, and they did. But they won the regular season title by two full games and finished 25-4 and ranked fifth in the polls.

Duke had absolutely dominated the ACC Tournament in the previous five years or so. This time, it was someone else’s turn, and that someone was Gary Williams and Maryland. Led by tournament MVP John Gilchrist, the Terrapins defeated 15th-ranked Wake Forest, 17th-ranked NC State (overcoming a 19-point halftime deficit), and fifth-ranked Duke in consecutive games to bring home Williams’ first and only title.

Duke was the top seed in the Atlanta region. They survived two tough regional games against Illinois (essentially the same team that would reach the national championship game the following year) and Xavier. In the Final Four, it was a battle royal with the UConn Huskies. This game is remembered for Emeka Okafor going off in the second half as literally all of Duke’s big men – Williams, Randolph, and seldom-used Nick Horvath – fouled out after playing a total of 41 minutes among the three of them, prompting K to tell one of the officials, “You cheated us.” Incidentally, it’s also remembered as one of the worst “bad beats” of all time, as Duhon banked in a 3-pointer as time expired to flip the point spread.

We all know about one-and-done, but I had forgotten exactly when the NBA stopped taking high school players, which forced the one-and-done situation that we still live with today. The answer is 2006. Deng played before that rule was in place. As the second-ranked recruit (after Lebron James) in the high school class of 2003, he could have gone straight to the NBA from high school, but he chose to come to college, and then he chose to leave after a year. It’s hard not to play the what if game with Deng. Of course there are 100 players you could do that with, but Deng and Corey Maggette are different because they did it when it was rare and before the rule was in place. You have to think that one of those 2005-6 Redick/Williams teams that both had disappointing endings may have had a different outcome.

Record: 33-7, 14-4 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national final
Final AP Ranking: 3
All-ACC Players: Brice Johnson (1st)
All-Americans: Brice Johnson (1st)

This team did something that seems impossible in modern basketball: they were a great offensive team but a poor three-point shooting team. They were last in the ACC in three-pointers made per game. They were third-to-last in three-point FG%. I looked back at the most efficient offenses in the country over the last 20 years according to kenpom, and I have no hesitation in saying that this team is the worst three-point shooting team of that group. But they were the most efficient offense in the country in 2016. How did they do it? Three things: 1) they absolutely dominated the offensive glass; 2) they took care of the ball; and 3) they were incredibly efficient on two-point shots.

That frontcourt. Brice Johnson, Justin Jackson, Isaiah Hicks, and Kennedy Meeks. This group collectively made 689 two-point shots, converting at a 58% clip. Johnson had just an unbelievable year – 17 points per game on 61% shooting, 78% from the line, one of the best rebounders in the country, Top 10 in the league in steals, Top 10 in blocks. Kenpom rated him as the best player in the country that year, just ahead of the actual ACC Player of the Year Malcolm Brogdon. I don’t know who was better and I have nothing negative to say about Brogdon – but Johnson was really good.

Marcus Paige and Joel Berry were terrific in the backcourt as well. Paige’s numbers went down over the course of his career, but if you look at it, it’s due to the fact that it wasn’t until 2016 that Carolina had another guard. Prior to that year, his backcourt mates had been Leslie McDonald and Nate Britt. When Berry emerged in 2016, Paige finally had that complementary player, and while it took away from his numbers a bit, it worked out beautifully for the team.

There was a puzzling early season loss at Northern Iowa – I assume that was the “homecoming game” for Marcus Paige – and a couple other shaky moments. But the Tar Heels closed the regular season with a resounding win in Cameron Indoor and were ready for the ACC Tournament.

I always got the feeling that Roy Williams was annoyed by the existence of the ACC Tournament, but once he got there, the competitive juices started flowing and he wanted to win as badly as anybody. This was a tournament that more or less followed the script. Carolina and Virginia were the two best teams with the two best players, and they squared off for the championship. The only regular season meeting had been won by the Cavaliers on their home court just two weeks earlier.

It was a tense, tight affair. Virginia maintained a slim lead for most of the game until a 15-2 run by the Tar Heels starting about midway through the second half turned a four-point deficit into a nine-point lead. Virginia cut it back to three, but couldn’t get any closer. It was kind of a turn-the-tables game in that it was Virginia who dominated the glass but couldn’t make a shot. Brogdon was outplayed by Joel Berry, who was rewarded with the Everett Case Award as the tournament MVP.

The Tar Heels earned the top seed in the East region. As NCAA tournaments go, they had a pretty easy time of it. There was really no point in any game prior to the final where they were in danger of losing. I don’t think they ever trailed in the second half of any game. They had a relatively easy path. The #2 and #3 seeds in their region lost, so as a result their regional final matchup was against Notre Dame, a team they had just beaten by 31 in the ACC Tournament. Their national semifinal opponent was surprise Midwest region winner Syracuse, who had taken down Virginia in that regional final.

But their luck with easy opponents ran out in the final. Villanova was the best team in the country and had been all year. It was a classic final between the two best teams. Carolina played a terrific game and came up three points short. Brice Johnson, by the way, had a better tournament than Most Outstanding Player Ryan Arcidiacono. Had it not been for the modern convention that the MOP always comes from the champion, Johnson would have been the easy choice.

Behind Johnson, this was an extraordinarily balanced team. It’s one of the few teams in my Top 50 that doesn’t have an individual player in my ACC Top 100. Nobody else averaged as much as 13 points, 6 rebounds, or 4 assists. But the top five players behind Johnson – Paige, Berry, Hicks, Meeks, and Jackson – were all very good players. Nate Britt and Theo Pinson gave them good minutes off the bench. It was a team where guys accepted their roles and embraced a certain style of play, and it worked.

UNC Offensive Rebound % Under Roy Williams, National Ranking Among D1 Teams (ACC Ranking in parentheses):

Of Roy Williams’ 18 Carolina teams, 10 of them were the best offensive rebounding team in the ACC, none was worse than third, and none was worse than 21st nationally except the forgettable 2013 team. That does not happen by accident. A remarkable record.

• 2004 – 11 (2)
• 2005 – 15 (2)
• 2006 – 9 (1)
• 2007 – 9 (2)
• 2008 – 1 (1)
• 2009 – 21 (3)
• 2010 – 16 (3)
• 2011 – 21 (1)
• 2012 – 10 (1)
• 2013 – 77 (3)
• 2014 – 13 (1)
• 2015 – 5 (1)
• 2016 – 3 (1)
• 2017 – 1 (1)
• 2018 – 3 (2)
• 2019 – 16 (3)
• 2020 – 12 (1)
• 2021 – 1 (1)

Record: 32-5, 13-3 (2nd place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Sweet 16
Final AP Ranking: 3
All-ACC Players: Nolan Smith (ACC POY), Kyle Singler (1st)
All-Americans: Nolan Smith (1st)

The Kyrie Irving year. Duke was coming off a national championship, and going into 2011, there were two holes to plug. The first was replacing Jon Scheyer, and there the Blue Devils had several options, all of them good. Kyrie Irving was the consensus #2 recruit in the country behind UNC’s Harrison Barnes. Seth Curry was an impact transfer who had averaged 20 points per game as a freshman at Liberty. And sophomore Andre Dawkins had played well in limited minutes in 2010.

The second hole was on the interior. Lance Thomas and Brian Zoubek had graduated. Neither got a lot of ink, but they played vital roles on the championship team, anchoring the interior of one of the best defenses in the country and grabbing a ton of offensive rebounds. There, the plan was replacement by committee with Ryan Kelly and the Plumlee brothers getting more playing time.

So it was yet another Duke team stacked with blue chippers. Despite losing Irving to a toe injury in the eighth game, the Blue Devils went undefeated at home on their way to a 27-4 regular season record. Still without Irving, they had one of the most dominant ACC Tournaments ever, winning every game by at least 14 points. At 30-4, Duke traveled to the West region as the top seed.

Perhaps their second round game against eighth-seeded Michigan should have been a warning. The Blue Devils led all the way, but Michigan cut the lead to one inside two minutes, and it was all Duke could do to hang on for the two-point win. The Wolverines shot 51% for the game.

Next up was Arizona, a tough draw for a game in Anaheim. The Blue Devils started well, but their defense in the second half completely fell apart. The final margin was 16. It was a disappointing ending for a team that had a tremendous year.

This was a really good team, but compared to the championship team from the year before, the biggest difference was that interior toughness and rebounding. The 2010 team with Thomas and Zoubek was one of the best rebounding teams in the country; the 2011 team took a step back in that regard on both ends of the court. The 2011 team was actually a better shooting team, but their offensive efficiency went down because there weren’t nearly as good on the offensive glass.

The other interesting storyline was Irving – his game, his injury, his absence, his return, and how all that affected the team. Coach K knew what he had; Irving was a Day 1 starter and showed immediately that he was ready. In his seventh college game, he scored 31 to lead the Blue Devils to a big win over Michigan State. But in the very next game, Irving sustained the toe injury that would keep him out for the rest of the season until the NCAA Tournament.

This meant more playing time for Seth Curry and Andre Dawkins and more scoring responsibility for Nolan Smith. That Duke went on to have such a great year says volumes about how they stepped up, but you have to wonder how the team would have developed differently with a healthy Irving all year. Based on his first eight games, he was playing at a first team All-ACC level. He would have been one of the all-time great freshmen in the ACC, possibly the country.

Irving’s return for the NCAA Tournament must have been challenging for the coaching staff. Duke had played 26 games without him. It’s certainly a good problem to have, adding such an incredible talent to a team that was already one of the best in the country. And there was really no decision about whether to play him; he’s too good. You can’t not play him. On the other hand, how do you integrate him into the team without disrupting everything? K chose to bring him off the bench. Seth Curry lost minutes to Irving and was ultimately a non-factor in the games against Michigan and Arizona. And you know Duke’s team defense must have been affected by trying to reincorporate Irving.

But I’m dwelling too much on what this team didn’t accomplish rather than what they did. With or without Irving, they went 32-5, were ranked #1 most of the year, and dominated the ACC Tournament. They earned their spot in the Top 50.

“[Kyrie Irving will] be like, ‘Get out of the way, I’ve got it,'” [Nolan] Smith said. “You don’t really hear that too often, when a freshman will tell two seniors on the wings to get out of the way. We have no problem letting him do it.” – from the AP write-up of Duke’s win over Michigan State, December 2, 2010

Record: 25-3, 14-0 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Lost in final
NCAA Tournament: Did not make it
Final AP Ranking: 6
All-ACC Players: John Roche (ACC POY), Tom Owens (1st)
All-Americans: John Roche (2nd)

South Carolina’s last two years in the ACC were its best two. While the 1971 team won the ACC Tournament and the 1970 team did not, overall I think the 1970 team was better. They were a reflection of coach Frank McGuire – a bunch of brash, tough, in-your-face New Yorkers who didn’t care what you thought about them. Big men Tom Owens and Tom Riker owned the glass, ACC Player of the Year John Roche was the leading scorer and emotional leader, and Bobby Cremins was the scrappy, ball-hawking point guard.

McGuire brought the exact same New York pipeline recruiting strategy to South Carolina that he had used at North Carolina. Other programs had pipelines as well, but McGuire took it to the extreme. I don’t have data on every player, but for the players I do have, I found only one (Rick Aydlett) who wasn’t from New York. Owens, Riker, Roche, Cremins, Kevin Joyce, John Ribock, Bobby Carver… all from New York. And the same was true of his North Carolina teams. In the days before national recruiting databases, coaches relied on their network of local scouts to find good players and their credibility within that local community to attract them. Nobody ever did that better than Coach McGuire.

A difficulty with ranking the 1970 team is that they didn’t play a great schedule. Their only marquee non-conference game was a neutral court matchup against Austin Carr-led Notre Dame. The Gamecocks survived an overtime thriller, “holding” Carr to 43 points. The ACC that year was good, but not what it would become two or three years later. North Carolina still had Charlie Scott but came down a tick after reaching the Final Four the previous three years. NC State was solid, and Duke was hanging on to post-Bubas respectability. But it was still the ACC, and if you look at the results, South Carolina didn’t just go 14-0, they dominated those games. They had only one close ACC game all year, a two-point win at NC State. They won every other ACC game by 10+ points. The only blemishes on their record were a one-point early season loss against Tennessee and a midseason defeat at the hands of nationally-ranked and Terry Holland-coached Davidson.

In fact, the Gamecocks had so thoroughly dominated the league that going into the Tournament, teams clearly felt they had to try something different. And as had been the case several times in prior years, that thing was the slowdown. In the first round, South Carolina took on Clemson, a team they had beaten by 21 and 47 in the regular season. This time, the Tigers held the ball, and the Gamecocks barely survived a 34-33 nail-biter. The semifinal against Wake Forest was relatively easy, but ACC Player of the Year John Roche suffered an ankle injury late in the game which was to loom large in the final against NC State. The Wolfpack also employed slowdown tactics, and with Roche slowed by the ankle, NC State managed to eke out a 42-39 double overtime win. And since the ACC sent only one team to the NCAA Tournament at that time, the Gamecocks’ season was over.

Defensive statistics from 1970 are scarce, but based on the information we do have, this appears to be one of the greatest defensive teams of this (or perhaps any) era. The Gamecocks held opponents to 38% from the floor and led the nation in fewest fouls committed with 13.8 per game. They had a huge advantage from the line, making 67 more free throws than their opponents attempted. They appear to have been an exceptional rebounding team as well, which makes sense with the twin towers Owens and Riker in the middle. Owens led the league in rebounds per game all three of his years on varsity.

I want to riff on that foul point to illustrate something important. Many fans do not fully appreciate the importance of getting to the free throw line on offense, and not sending the opponents to the foul line on defense. Let’s try to quantify why this is so important.

It has become more-or-less accepted wisdom in modern basketball analysis that the essential measure of how good a team is on offense or defense is points per possession (or, as it is more commonly expressed, points per 100 possessions). You’ll see this statistic routinely on kenpom.com, barttorvik.com, basketball-reference.com, nba.com, and other modern basketball stats sites. In fact, if you want to know how kenpom and barttorvik rank teams, this is how. Their ratings are essentially points per 100 possessions on offense minus points per 100 possessions on defense, adjusted for strength of schedule. They don’t match perfectly, which I infer is because they have slight differences in how they adjust for strength of schedule.

In college, an elite offense is around 120 points per 100 possessions. A terrible offense is around 90. That’s the difference between elite and terrible.

Now let’s think about that in the context of free throws. Let’s say your team shoots 70% from the line, and as a simplifying assumption, assume that every player shoots 70% individually. For 2-shot fouls, your expected points (or long-run average, if you prefer) from those possessions is (0.7 x 2) = 1.4 points. On a 3-shot foul (the best play in basketball for an offense) you would expect to average (0.7 x 3) = 2.1 points per possession. (It’s actually a tiny bit higher than that with the possibility that you get an offensive rebound off a missed free throw and then score, but we’ll ignore that for this argument.) Considering an elite offense averages 1.2 points per possession, 1.4 is out of this world good. If you had a team that averaged 1.4 points per possession for a season, it would be the greatest offense in the history of college basketball.

Even a 1-and-1 for a 70% shooter has an expected value of 1.19 points per possession – still at elite offense level. If you could somehow get a 1-and-1 for a 70% shooter on every possession, your offense would be among the best in the country.

Dean Smith used to say that one of the reason he didn’t like to take the first available shot is that it doesn’t give the defense a chance to foul you. This is why. Because Dean Smith was a math whiz, and he understood the numbers.

Now let’s apply this to 1970 South Carolina. The Gamecocks shot 297 more free throws than their opponents. Let’s round it to 300 for ease of calculation. And, again for ease of calculation, let’s assume those 300 extra free throws came from 150 possessions that ended in 2-shot fouls, or about 5.3 possessions per game. Think of it as 5.3 possessions per game for each team where the Gamecocks were getting to the line and their opponents weren’t.

Now, South Carolina shot right at 70% as a team, so that means that on those 5.3 possessions, they would expect to get (5.3 x 1.4) = 7.42 points. Now let’s look at the corresponding 5.3 possessions for their opponents. South Carolina had a great defense, so let’s estimate they allowed 0.9 points per possession. That means their opponents were generating (5.3 x 0.9) = 4.77 points.

So to summarize, South Carolina’s 297 extra free throw attempts amounted to a 7.42 – 4.77 = 2.65 points per game advantage over their opponents. Their overall average margin of victory was 16.6 points per game. That means that nearly 20% of their overall margin of victory was the result of getting to the line so much more than their opponents.

I hope that helps illustrate why it’s so important to draw fouls and to avoid committing them. It’s not the most important thing, but it is an underappreciated advantage of many great teams. Few did it better than the 1970 Gamecocks.

Record: 32-4, 14-2 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Sweet 16
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: JJ Redick (ACC POY), Shelden Williams (1st)
All-Americans: JJ Redick (National POY), Shelden Williams (1st)

This is a really interesting team. JJ Redick and Shelden Williams were obviously the cornerstones, but on paper, they had a strong and deep supporting cast. DeMarcus Nelson returned for his sophomore season after making the ACC All-Freshman team the year before. Seniors Sean Dockery and Lee Melchionni provided depth and experience. And the recruiting class was second to none, with five Top 60 recruits, including four McDonald’s All-Americans. This team was loaded.

And they played like it, starting 17-0 and blowing out several ranked teams, including #2 Texas. After a slip-up against Georgetown, they won ten more to run their record to 27-1. But the Blue Devils dropped their last two regular season games against Florida State and North Carolina. In the game against the Tar Heels, Redick had an uncharacteristically poor shooting performance, going 5-21 from the field, and maybe that was a hint to the rest of the country on how Duke could be beaten. Just stop JJ Redick, easy right?

The ACC Tournament consisted of three tight games against Miami, Wake Forest, and an outstanding Boston College team. The Blue Devils survived all three to win their seventh ACC championship in eight years. Redick was named the Everett Case Award winner and the ACC Player of the Year for the second time.

Duke went into the NCAA Tournament hoping to erase the memory of the previous season when the top-seeded Blue Devils were upset by Michigan State in the Sweet 16. But this year’s Sweet 16 was deja vu all over again, only this time it was LSU and Glen “Big Baby” Davis who played spoiler. Tiger defensive specialist Garrett Temple (who, at the time of this writing, is the 6th-oldest active player in the NBA) frustrated Redick all night. The Blue Devils shot 28% on the way to their lowest point total of the year, and their season, and Redick’s career, ended in disappointment.

What went wrong, in retrospect? Why did a team with two first team All-Americans fail to get out of the Sweet 16 for the second year in a row? Well, when you look at it honestly, this team had some weaknesses. It’s a testament to how exceptional Redick and Williams were that they had such an incredible year. Here are the challenges they had:

1. The supporting cast underperformed. Nelson was hobbled by an ankle injury all year and was a non-factor in the NCAA Tournament. The five freshmen collectively were underwhelming. Josh McRoberts was a good player, but not as good as many fans expected from the top high school recruit in the country. He turned pro after two years without really leaving a mark on the program. Greg Paulus had some good moments in his career, but his playing time went down every year and he is best remembered for getting dunked on by Danny Green. Martynas Pocius, Eric Boateng, and Jamal Boykin never became contributors at Duke.
2. They were thin on the interior. This was one of the worst rebounding teams in the country. According to kenpom, they ranked 283rd in offensive rebounding percentage and 311th in defensive rebounding percentage among Division I teams. Which is ironic considering Shelden Williams is seventh in career rebounds in ACC history. But the only size they had besides Shelden was McRoberts, and he wasn’t a banger. If Shelden didn’t get it, nobody got it.
3. They were highly dependent on JJ Redick. When he was in the game, Redick took 35% of the Blue Devils’ shots, a huge percentage. And most of the time, that wasn’t a bug, it was a feature. When the guy who takes 35% of your shots has a True Shooting Percentage of 63%, like Redick did for the season, you’re going to have a great offense. On the other hand, when the guy who takes 35% of your shots goes 3-for-18, like Redick did against LSU, you’re in trouble. Of course, it worked for them all year, and it could have worked in the tourney as well. Which brings us to #4…
4. They picked a bad day to have a bad day against LSU. Redick showed he was human. LSU defended him really well. It happens.

But enough about their flaws. They went 32-4, they were ranked #1 for most of the year, and they won the ACC Championship. This was a great team, a Top 50 team.

This 2006 season marks a logical bookend to the most impressive 10-ish year run in the history of college basketball since Wooden-era UCLA. That would be the Duke teams of 1998-2006. It’s not like Duke fell off a cliff after 2006, but the level dipped just a bit. How could it not? During the nine-year stretch from 1998-2006, here’s what they did:

• 280-42 overall record, .869 winning percentage, average record 31-5
• 121-23 ACC record, .840 winning percentage, average record 13.4-2.6
• Eight of nine teams ranked #1 at some point during the season, the other ranked #2
• Eight #1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament, the other was a #3
• Six ACC regular season titles
• Seven ACC Tournament titles
• Five teams finished ranked #1 in the AP poll; no team finished ranked lower than #7
• 65-25 record against ranked teams

The only thing that comes close is UNC 1981-1988. But Duke’s is better.