Ncaa Men's Basketball's Finest
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The NCAA salutes 360,000 student-athletes participating in 23 sports at 1,000 member institutions NCAA 48758-10/05 BF05 MEN’S BASKETBALL’S FINEST THE NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION P.O. Box 6222, Indianapolis, Indiana 46206-6222 www.ncaa.org October 2005 Researched and Compiled By: Gary K. Johnson, Associate Director of Statistics. Distributed to Division I sports information departments of schools that sponsor basketball; Division I conference publicity directors; and selected media. NCAA, NCAA logo and National Collegiate Athletic Association are registered marks of the Association and use in any manner is prohibited unless prior approval is obtained from the Association. Copyright, 2005, by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Printed in the United States of America. ISSN 1521-2955 NCAA 48758/10/05 Contents Foreword ............................................................ 4 Players................................................................ 7 Player Index By School........................................168 101 Years of All-Americans.................................174 Coaches ..............................................................213 Coach Index By School........................................288 On the Cover Top row (left to right): Tim Duncan, Bill Walton, Michael Jordan and Oscar Robertson. Second row: Jerry West, Dean Smith, James Naismith and Isiah Thomas. Third row: Bill Russell, Shaquille O’Neal, Carmelo Anthony and John Wooden. Bottom row: Tubby Smith, Larry Bird, Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul- Jabbar) and David Robinson. – 3 – Foreword Have you ever wondered about how many points Michael Jordan scored at North Carolina? Or how many shots were swatted away by Shaquille O’Neal at LSU? What kind of shooting percentage did Bill Walton have at UCLA? What was John Wooden’s coaching won-lost record before he went to UCLA? Did former Tennessee coach Ray Mears really look like Cosmo Kramer? The answers to these questions and tons more can be found in these pages. NCAA Men’s Basketball’s Finest covers the college careers of more than 600 of the top NCAA basketball players and coaches of all time. The world first got to know names like Maravich, Alcindor (Jabbar), Chamberlain, Jordan, Bird, Magic and Shaq when they became college basketball stars. Some became heroes in the NCAA tournament, such as Michael Jordan as a fresh- man sinking the last basket of the game on a 16-foot jumper to give North Carolina a one-point win and the 1982 national championship. Others never got the oppor- tunity to show their stuff in the NCAA tournament, such as LSU’s Pete Maravich. But two things all these athletes and many others have in common are they had great college careers and all their college statistics are listed in this book. In this third edition of NCAA Men’s Basketball’s Finest, every individual career sta- tistic that could be found is listed, including some careers that took place before 1948, the first year of official NCAA basketball statistics. Official weekly individual statistical rankings in scoring and shooting began with the 1947-48 season, rebounds were added for the 1950-51 season, assists in 1983-84, blocked shots and steals in 1985-86 and three-point field goals in 1986- 87. The years listed in the career statistics are the second year of the basketball sea- son; in other words, the 1950-51 season is listed as 1951 throughout the book. In the players’ section, some statistics are left blank while others have a dash (--). If a category is left blank, it means that statistic was kept but for that particular ath- lete it is not available. If a category has a dash, then that statistic was not officially kept that year. In 1973, freshmen became eligible to compete on the varsity level. From 1957 to 1972, freshmen were ineligible to play varsity sports. Players or coaches found to be involved in gambling, point-shaving, game-fixing or major NCAA rules violations during their college careers are excluded from this book. The last section of this book covers the year-by-year and career records of the greatest head coaches ever in the college game, from Phog Allen to John Wooden. With the new NCAA database in place of all schools’ year-by-year won-lost records and their coaches, many early coaches were discovered to meet the criteria to be included in this book. The criteria changed slightly for players and coaches from the last edition. So many new names were added; and likewise, some others were dropped when the criteria were not met. There are career statistics included in this book for 469 play- ers and 146 coaches. Statistics from only four-year U.S. colleges were used. Some players included in this book played at NCAA schools that were not in the Major College Division or Division I, but were later elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player or met the Olympic criteria. Likewise, men who were head coaches at any NCAA schools for at least 10 years regardless of divi- sion and were elected to the Hall as a coach or contributor are included in this book. The only person whose statistics are included in this book but did not meet the cri- teria is Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of the game of basketball. Although he is in the Hall of Fame named after him, he coached college basketball for only nine years (all at Kansas), one year short of meeting the criteria. The middle section of this book separating the players from the coaches is 101 years of all-America teams. Every all-America team from the top division of men’s college basketball that could be researched and found is included. From teams picked by magazines that are now out of print to today’s sports Web sites, all can be found in this section. – 4 – Criteria for Players The book includes all players who won any of the national honors, achieved any one of the statistical feats, or hold or share any one of the national records (through the 2005 season) listed below. The record-holder part is tricky. If, for instance, a player sets the national record, but it is broken later, he will not be in the book unless he also qualifies in another way. For all the criteria, players are included only if their team was in Division I the seasons they played. The only exception to this rule is if the athlete was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a play- er or played on the USA Olympic team after 1974, in which case the only criterion is that the athlete played at an NCAA school. The criteria changes for players from the last edition deal with the Olympics and seasonal leaders. The last book included anyone who played on at least two Olympic teams. This has been changed to those players who played on the USA Olympic team since 1974 when USA Basketball took control of team selection. The last edition of the Finest also included every player who led the nation in scoring for at least one season. The criterion was dropped and replaced by any player who led the nation three or more times in any positive statistical category or a combination of categories. National honors won: • Named Player of the Year by Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI), the U.S. Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) or the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC). • Wooden Award winner. • Naismith Award winner. • Consensus first-team all-American. • Two-time consensus second-team all-American. • Three-time first-team academic all-American. • Elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player. • Played on the USA Olympic basketball team after 1974 when USA Basketball (then known as ABAUSA) took control of team selection. National statistical achievements: • Led the nation three or more times in any positive statistical category or combina- tion of categories. • Scored 1,000 points or more in a season. • Averaged at least 36.0 points per game in a season. • Scored at least 2,500 points in career. • Averaged at least 30.0 points per game over a multi-year career. • Scored more than 2,000 points and pulled down more than 1,000 rebounds in a career. • Recorded at least 1,600 rebounds in a career. • Averaged at least 20.0 rebounds per game over a multi-year career. National career or season record (holds or shares) in: • Points • Scoring average • Field-goal percentage • Three-point field goals made • Three-point field-goal percentage • Free-throw percentage • Rebounds all-time • Rebounds since 1973 • Rebounding average all-time • Rebounding average since 1973 • Assists • Blocked shots • Steals – 5 – Seeing the list of honors brings up the question: Who is the game’s most-honored player? In some ways, that is not a fair question because more national awards have been added through the years. But it would be hard to top UCLA’s Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). He is the only player to combine three consensus all-America seasons with three NCAA championships by his team. Also, he is the only three-time winner of the tournament’s MVP award. If freshmen had been eligible when he played, it might have been four- for-four. Jerry Lucas of Ohio State and Bill Walton of UCLA are the only other three-time consensus choices to play in three Final Fours (Walton’s team won two NCAA titles and Lucas’ had one). Another way to look at this might be to see which players meet the most criteria on the list. The undisputed champion would be LSU’s Pete Maravich, who qualified in 10 different categories. Maravich is followed by Elvin Hayes of Houston and Oscar Robertson of Cincinnati, who both met the criteria in nine categories each.