Tag: ACC

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.

1982 Virginia
Record: 30-4, 12-2 (1st place tie)
ACC Tournament: Lost in final
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Sweet 16
Final AP Ranking: 3
All-ACC Players: Ralph Sampson (ACC POY), Othell Wilson (1st)
All-Americans: Ralph Sampson (National POY)

1981 Virginia
Record: 29-4, 13-1 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Lost in semifinal
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Final Four
Final AP Ranking: 5
All-ACC Players: Ralph Sampson (ACC POY), Jeff Lamp (1st)
All-Americans: Ralph Sampson (1st, Naismith Award), Jeff Lamp (2nd)

Virginia from 1981 to 1983 had three teams that are very difficult to differentiate. The records were 29-4, 30-4, and 29-5; the AP rankings were 5th, 3rd, and 4th; and all three teams were built around the same player. I’m tempted to combine them and rank them as if they were one team. But, I’m not doing that for any other teams, so I guess I can’t do it here. And, if you look closely enough, while it does require some hair-splitting, I think some distinctions can be drawn.

The 1981 team had Jeff Lamp. Lamp was a great player in his own right and was actually the leading scorer ahead of Sampson on that team. The other double-figure scorer was senior Lee Raker.

The 1982 team lost Lamp and Raker. Their playing time was picked up by freshmen Tim Mullen and Jim Miller and sophomore Ricky Stokes. Their scoring became more balanced, but their style of play overall was similar to 1981.

The 1983 team swapped out departing senior Jeff Jones for transfer Rick Carlisle. Carlisle was a better shooter than Jones, but a lesser defender, at least from the numbers. This team played at a faster pace, scored and allowed more points, turned the ball over more, and didn’t get as many steals.

Here is where I come down on ranking them. I think the 1981 and 1982 teams are virtually indistinguishable, and 1983 is just a touch below. Here is my reasoning.

The 1981 team had just one bad loss, in the ACC Tournament, but they made up for it by getting to the Final Four. I also give them a few extra points because they had a second scorer in Jeff Lamp which the 1982 and 1983 teams lacked.

The 1982 team, there is really nothing to criticize until the NCAA Tournament. Prior to that, they lost two close games to Carolina and a one-point game at Maryland. Nothing to be ashamed of there. But then they went and lost a Sweet 16 game to UAB. I’m not going to completely excuse that, but I want to point out a couple of very important mitigating circumstances, 1) Othell Wilson was hurt; and 2) the game was in Birmingham. That’s right, #1 seed Virginia had to play a Sweet 16 game against UAB in Birmingham. That shouldn’t have happened. It’s absolutely unfair. And they had to play the game without their first-team All-ACC guard. You have to cut them some slack for that. They should have won anyway; they missed free throws, for one thing, and they turned the ball over 18 times.

The 1983 team though. Twice they were on the verge of something great, and twice they couldn’t beat NC State. Now let’s give the Wolfpack some credit; we call them a Cinderella team, but the truth is they were really good when Whittenburg was healthy. But I can’t put a team in the Top 50 that lost to Chaminade and then NC State twice when everything was on the line.

The narrative around Sampson (and by extension these Virginia teams) tends to focus on what he didn’t accomplish rather than what he did, and that’s unfair. The thing is, Virginia had every chance to change the narrative. All they had to do was beat NC State, and they got two chances to do it. I think if they had won either of those games, it would have transformed the way this team is viewed. The narrative would be about a great team that finally got over the hump after years of frustration.

Record: 26-6, 12-2 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Final Four
Final AP Ranking: 4
All-ACC Players: Larry Miller (ACC POY), Bob Lewis (1st)
All-Americans: Larry Miller (2nd)

1967 was one of those great turning points in ACC history. The previous four years had been dominated by Vic Bubas’ Duke teams. The Blue Devils won the regular season outright all four years (a feat equaled only by 1997-2000 Duke), won the Tournament in three of those years, and reached the Final Four three times.

Dean Smith was entering his sixth season at North Carolina. His teams had been moderately successful, compiling a 41-29 ACC record, but he had yet to achieve anything notable. He hadn’t won the regular season or the Tournament, or even reached the final. But with ACC leading scorer Bob Lewis and budding superstar Larry Miller returning, expectations were higher coming into the 1967 season. The Tar Heels were ranked 9th in the preseason AP poll – still behind Duke, which was ranked 4th. The Blue Devils had lost senior standouts Jack Marin and Steve Vacendak, but there was still plenty of talent with sharpshooter Bob Verga and junior big man Mike Lewis.

The Tar Heels put everyone on notice with an early season win at Kentucky. In early January, they suffered their first loss of the season against a Princeton team that would eventually go 23-2 in the regular season. Five days later, they traveled to Cameron Indoor to face the Blue Devils. Two seasons before, the Tar Heels had snapped Duke’s 29-game home ACC winning streak, but overall, Dean Smith was 2-10 against the Blue Devils. Carolina gritted out a 59-56 victory. They would go on to beat the Blue Devils two more times on their way to Dean Smith’s first ACC championship. It was truly a changing of the guard; the Tar Heels were to be the preeminent ACC program for many years to come, while 1967 marked the beginning of a period of decline for Duke that would see them vanish from the national scene for a decade or so.

Obviously Miller and Lewis were great players, but what really put this team over the top in 1967 was the impact of sophomores Rusty Clark, Bill Bunting, and Dick Grubar. Somewhat overshadowed by the greatness of Lewis, Miller, and later Charlie Scott, this trio won three regular season titles, three ACC Tournaments, and went to three Final Fours in their three years on varsity. Yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty good career.

In the regional semifinal, Carolina found themselves facing the same Princeton team that had defeated them in January. This time, the Tar Heels survived an overtime thriller to advance to the regional final, where they had a more comfortable victory over Boston College behind 31 points from Lewis. In the national semifinal against Dayton, the Tar Heels could not stop the Flyers’ Don May, who scored 34 points and pulled down 15 rebounds. That loss spared them from having to face the most dominant team in the history of college basketball – 1967 UCLA.

No one could have anticipated what Dean Smith and his program would accomplish over the next 30 years. But it all started in 1967.

What was this team good at? It looks like they were pretty good at everything. They led the league in FG% at 47.2% and were second to South Carolina in opponents FG% allowed at 41.7%. That 5.5% disparity in FG% explains a little over 7 points of their 11 point average scoring margin. The other 4 points is explained by also getting more shots than their opponents, which means rebounding and turnovers. They were a good if not great rebounding team, and while the statistical record doesn’t allow us to make definitive statements about their turnover margin, it seems likely that it was a combination of turnovers and rebounding that allowed them to get more shots than their opponents.

Miller was highly efficient from the floor at a high volume, taking roughly 25% of the Tar Heels’ shots. His mediocre free throw shooting detracted a bit from overall efficiency, but he was still a terrific offensive player. Lewis was a little less efficient than Miller but still good, not as accurate from the floor but much better from the line. Clark and Grubar were highly efficient as well. All five starters except for Bunting had a True Shooting Percentage over 50%.

Record: 29-5, 15-1 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Sweet 16
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Chris Carrawell (ACC POY), Shane Battier (1st), Jason Williams (3rd)
All-Americans: Chris Carrawell (1st), Shane Battier (2nd)

This team was smack dab in the middle of the five-year run of great Duke teams from 1998-2002. While it’s all relative, of course, I think this team was the worst of the five. But when you look at the circumstances, it’s still really impressive what they accomplished. The top four scorers from the juggernaut 1999 team – Elton Brand, William Avery, Corey Maggette, and Trajan Langdon – were gone. Over 65% of the minutes from the 1999 team were gone. As a result, the Blue Devils were ranked “only” tenth in the preseason poll. After losing their first two games to Stanford and UConn, they fell to 18th and alarm bells were sounded.

Then they proceeded to win 18 in a row. Alarm cancelled, I guess… the only other losses were at home to Maryland and at St. John’s. The Blue Devils closed the regular season at 24-4, 15-1. They won the ACC regular season by a record margin of four full games over second place Maryland.

The tournament was more of the same. The closest game was the nine-point semifinal win over Wake Forest. The whole event seemed like an exercise in postponing the inevitable. Jason Williams became the fourth freshman overall and the first non-UNC freshman to win the Everett Case Award (Phil Ford 1975, Sam Perkins 1981, Jerry Stackhouse 1994).

So this team that had lost so many key players and stumbled out of the gate found themselves ranked number one in the country going into the NCAA Tournament. How did they do it? Well, in short, the returning players – Shane Battier, Chris Carrawell, and Nate James – stepped up, and the freshmen – Williams, Carlos Boozer, and Mike Dunleavy – were as good as advertised. Carrawell, in particular, took a major leap forward. I’m not sure he deserved to be first-team All-American, but he had a great year.

They got a little bit unlucky in the NCAA Tournament, running into a seriously underseeded Florida team in the Sweet 16. This was the Mike Miller – Udonis Haslem group that advanced to the national championship game. Boozer got into foul trouble and played only 21 minutes, and the Blue Devils shot an uncharacteristically poor 3-19 from three-point range. Florida got great contributions from their bench – unlike Duke, they went ten deep – and the Gators advanced.

As good as this team was, it had some real weaknesses, or at least vulnerabilities. It wasn’t a deep team. They basically played six and went deeper only if they ran into foul trouble. They were a good but not great defensive team, and in particular their defensive rebounding was terrible. The problem was that their real big guys – Casey Sanders, Nick Horvath, and Matt Christensen – weren’t very good. As a result, Boozer played as an undersized center, and they just were not a big team overall. Whatever weaknesses they may have had, they made up for it by being the best offensive team in the country, overwhelming defenses with their ability to put points on the scoreboard.

I also have to ding this team a little bit for playing in what was a relatively weak ACC. I think there is a good argument that 1999-2000 was the weakest year for the ACC in the forty-year window from the early 1970s until the early 2010s. The only other ranked team was Maryland. North Carolina, in their last year under Bill Guthridge, made an unexpected run to the Final Four, but they really weren’t very good. 15-1 is 15-1, but it has to be seen in the context of that year’s ACC.