Tag: ACC

2003 Top 50 List: Not eligible

Dan Collins List: Yes

There is a credible argument that Tyler Hansbrough is the greatest player in ACC history.  Let’s see… the only player in ACC history to make first team All-ACC four times; the ACC’s all-time leading scorer; one of only two players (the other is Mike Gminski) in the Top 10 in ACC career scoring and rebounding; three-time Consensus first team All-American; only player in ACC history to make first or second team All-American four times; ACC Player of the Year; ACC Tournament Most Outstanding Player; two-time ACC Tournament champion; 2009 national champion; 124-22 record.  I guess it’s obvious that I don’t think Hansbrough is actually the best player in ACC history, but I’m saying you can argue that and you would have a case.

I’ve been reflecting on what made Hansbrough so good.  He wasn’t an incredible athlete; he didn’t have great post moves.  He wasn’t an unskilled player – he did have a good shooting touch for a big man – but he wasn’t Nikola Jokic or Draymond Green out there either.  My first observation about the secret to Hansbrough’s success is that he turned drawing fouls into a huge competitive advantage – probably better than anyone else in the history of college basketball. 

I knew he got to the line a lot, but when you look at the numbers, it’s really amazing.  He is the all-time NCAA leader in free throws made.  By a lot.  The Top 10:

• Hansbrough, 982
• Dickie Hemric, Wake Forest, 905
• Pete Maravich, LSU, 893
• Oscar Robertson, Cincinnati, 869
• Caleb Green, Oral Roberts, 852
• Don Schlundt, Indiana, 826
• Troy Bell, Boston College, 810
• Bill Bradley, Princeton, 791
• Alonzo Mourning, Georgetown, 771
• Derrick Chievous, Missouri, 764

The value to his team from him getting to the line can hardly be overstated.  Let’s try to quantify it.  In 2008, Hansbrough averaged 9.7 free throw attempts per game.  Let’s round it to 10 per game to simplify the calculations.  And then let’s assume that they were all two-shot fouls, again to simplify the calculations.  That means that five possessions per game for the Tar Heels were ending with Hansbrough going to the line for two shots.

He shot 80.6% from the line.  So that means that, on average, he would score 2 * .806 = 1.612 points per possession on a 2-shot foul.  How good is that?  Well, the best offense in the country is typically around 1.2 points per possession.  So for each of those five possessions, the Tar Heels were 0.4 points better than the best offense in the country.  That comes out to +2 points per game better than the best offense in the country – just because of Hansbrough’s trips to the line.

In reflecting on Hansbrough’s success more generally, I think he has a lot to teach us about excellence in college basketball, and how it can be achieved.  In particular, I assert that Hansbrough achieved greatness by taking his biggest strength and hyper-developing it, beyond any reasonable expectation of success.  In other words, he kept doubling down on what he was already good at, rather than focusing on expanding his game.

That’s not to say that he didn’t expand his game at all. He did.  But the cornerstone of his success was his ability to use his size and strength around the basket, and what he did was to get more out of that than seemed possible.  I’m sure Hansbrough had people along the way tell him, son, you can only take that bull-in-a-china-shop thing so far.  You need to expand your game, improve your perimeter shot, work on your handle, become a better passer, etc.  But he didn’t take that approach.  Instead, he said hey, I’m already really good at what I do, but I’m going to keep getting better at it.  I’m good at putting my head down and getting to the line, but what if I get to the line more than anyone else in the history of college basketball?  I’m strong, but I’ll get stronger. I’m a good free throw shooter, but I’ll become a great one.  I’m a good offensive rebounder, but I’ll become a great one.

This, then, is the basketball genius of Tyler Hansbrough: his committed, confident, focused single-mindedness.  He knew exactly who he was as a player.  He kept the game simple.  He never tried to be what he wasn’t.  He didn’t fret about his weaknesses; he consolidated his strengths.  Basketball is a sport that rewards that.  If you want to be a great basketball player, develop one thing that nobody can stop, and keep developing it.  It might take you all the way to the top.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

When you first get to school, you’d end up in Rat League [pickup games]. It was make it, take it. You played to 10 baskets. It was kind of routine that if you got up against Heyman’s team, you’d go 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 and then you’d sit down. Heyman was the best player ever at Duke… there was no more dominant force than Heyman. – Jack Marin in Game of My Life by Alwyn Featherston

Art Heyman was the best of the early generation of Yankees who came down south to play in the ACC.  Heyman was the center of a fierce recruiting battle between North Carolina’s Frank McGuire and new Duke head coach Vic Bubas.  Bubas’ landing of Heyman (who had previously committed to North Carolina) catapulted the Blue Devils into national prominence and ignited their run of excellence in the 1960s.  In Heyman’s senior season, the Blue Devils reached the Final Four and a #2 national ranking.  He was ACC Player of the Year, Consensus National Player of the Year, ACC Tournament Most Outstanding Player, and NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player.  He made first team All-ACC three times.

Heyman’s jersey wasn’t retired at Duke until 1990. This was ridiculous, and Heyman, a brash, fiery, competitive player, resented it. There were numerous fights and confrontations during his career, including a well-known fight with North Carolina players during a game in 1961.  But through it all, he managed to stay eligible and on the court, and continued to dominate.  He was one year behind Len Chappell, and the two of them had some tremendous battles.  Here are the results of their five head-to-head matchups:

Date	Game Result	Chappell	Heyman
2/9/1961	Duke, 100-90	24	31
2/14/1961	Wake, 103-89	38	31
12/31/1961	Duke, 75-73	37	33
1/27/1962	Duke, 82-68	24	26
2/15/1962	Wake, 97-79	37	18

And how’s this for a Senior Day?  Heyman had 40 points and 24 rebounds to lead Duke to a 106-91 trouncing of North Carolina, completing a perfect ACC regular season for the Blue Devils.

Heyman was named Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Tournament in 1963 despite the fact that the Blue Devils lost in the semifinal.  This was fairly common at the time.  A player from a non-winning team received the award in 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1966, and 1971.  Since 1971, the only non-winning player to be MOP is Akeem Olajuwon in 1983.  It’s hard to say exactly why this changed, although dropping the third-place game in the Final Four probably has something to do with it.  Of course, it’s perfectly sensible that the best player in the tournament might not have been on the winning team, and the voters in the 1950s and 1960s clearly had no compunction about saying that, but at some point it became accepted practice to pick a player from the winning team.  It would be interesting to look back at the tournaments since 1971 and figure out who the real MOP was.  But that’s a project for another day.

2003 Top 50 List: Not eligible

Dan Collins List: Yes

I hated him too, but he was damn good.  Two-time ACC Player of the Year.  Two-time ACC Tournament Most Outstanding Player.  National Player of the Year as a senior, runner-up as a junior.  Second-leading scorer all time (to Tyler Hansbrough) in the ACC.  All-time leader in three-pointers made, both single-season and career.  Career free throw percentage leader.  That’s a Top 10 player.

His senior year was flat out one of the greatest seasons in ACC history.  He averaged 27 points with the True Shooting Percentage of 63%.  He averaged 29.4 in ACC games.  There is a strong case for that as the greatest offensive season in ACC history.  Remember how he did it?  After three years of bombing threes with incredible proficiency, he suddenly added a floor game and starting driving.  He shot nearly as many twos as threes, and he got to the line, and he made them all, or at least it seemed that way.

What I remember most are the daggers.  More than any player I can remember, he hit daggers.  You were hanging around, keeping it close, trying to make a run late in the game, and then Boom.  Boom.  Boom.  You’re done.  Good night.

If there’s anything you can hold against Redick, it’s that he laid some eggs in the NCAA Tournament.  In both 2005 and 2006, Duke was a #1 seed after winning the ACC Tournament.  In both years, they were upset in the Sweet 16, and Redick shot 4-for-14 and 3-for-18 respectively in those games.  For his career, he played in six games in the Sweet 16 or later, and he shot 28% in those six games.  He did not have a signature performance in a big NCAA Tournament game.

But he sure had some in the ACC Tournament.  He is, in fact, the tournament’s all-time leading scorer.  As a freshman in 2003, Redick scored 23 points in the last 10 minutes to lead the Blue Devils to a comeback win in the final against NC State.  And that’s not one of the two years that he was Most Outstanding Player.  If one were making an All-Time All-ACC Tournament team, Redick would be on it. It’s an interesting fact (courtesy of the Greenville (SC) News of March 17, 2003) that in that 2003 tournament, the votes for Tournament MOP had to be submitted with four minutes left in the final. Redick scored 13 points in those last four minutes. Had the votes been submitted after the game, Redick would probably be the only three-time ACC Tournament MOP.

I think Redick, as good as he was, was underestimated.  He kept surprising you by getting better when you figured he had peaked.  He was more athletic than you think, but he didn’t overwhelm anyone with his size or quickness.  So there was a tendency to think, how much better can a one-dimensional, not-all-that-athletic shooter get?  The same thing happened in the NBA.  It took him several years to really get his career going, and a lot of people wrote him off as someone who would never be more than a bit player.  But he figured things out.  He knew what he was good at, he understood how the games were called, he made moving without the ball a science, and he worked hard to develop his game to maximize what he did well.

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

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

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

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

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

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

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

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

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

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

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

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

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

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

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

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

Year 1: 11-17 (3-11)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

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

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

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

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

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

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

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

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

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

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

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