ACC caught in the middle of a sprint to the NBA — Jacobs

Now that the major league drafts have rippled past and the pro playoffs been pursued to exhaustion, we’re ready to put the 2016 winter and spring sports seasons to rest.

Except that the playing seasons, like our interest, never really end.

Certainly college baseball, which began competition in mid-February, is still perking along, although without any of the North Carolina or ACC teams that crowded the NCAA tournament at the outset.

The ACC placed 10 squads in the field, tying the SEC for the most representatives ever in a single season. Included were N.C. State, Wake Forest and Duke, the Blue Devils for the first time since 1961, the year former Raleigh Capital and future Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski broke into the majors with the Boston Red Sox. Unfortunately, the subject of the ACC’s baseball prowess died faster than the presidential prospects of Dr. Ben Carson. Miami alone reached the World Series, only to immediately lose twice and go home.

Meanwhile, East Carolina, UNC Wilmington and Western Carolina also earned berths. The Pirates extended their stay longer than anyone else from the state, beating Virginia at Charlottesville before falling in three games on Texas Tech’s home turf.

Baseball’s double-elimination event is just a sideshow compared with the hugely popular and lucrative NCAA tournament that concluded in early April. (By the way, why not make the men’s basketball tournament double elimination as well? Surely at this point in the devolution of college sports it’s too late to make a straight-faced argument that classwork takes precedence over competitive fairness and generating more TV inventory.)

The ACC enjoyed a happy resurgence of basketball eminence in the 2016 NCAA men’s tournament, sending a record six teams to the Sweet 16. Both North Carolina and Syracuse reached the Final Four, the league’s best representation on the game’s biggest stage since 2004, and only the sixth time a pair of ACC teams made the same national semifinals.

Thanks to a buzzer-beater by Villanova’s Kris Jenkins that downed the Tar Heels, the ACC was denied its sixth set of consecutive NCAA titles. Duke had won the championship in 2015, a feat conjured with three freshman starters, all first-round NBA draft choices within 11 weeks of their final college contest.

Last year’s selection of Jahlil Okafor (third), Justise Winslow (10th) and Tyus Jones (24th) followed the contemporary template for prized ACC prospects. This year the one-year wonders were led by Duke’s Brandon Ingram, picked second. Two of the other three ACC players taken in the 2016 draft’s first round, Florida State’s Malik Beasley and Syracuse’s Malachi Richardson, also were freshmen. North Carolina senior Brice Johnson was chosen later in the first round, after the prodigies.

Fast track

Those picks are part of an entrenched pattern we should quit calling a trend or development. Departures by prominent college newcomers reflect the status quo, shaped by a rules tweak that more or less requires a year of college before going pro.

“Right now it’s a sprint to the NBA for high school players,” says Tom Konchalski, the longtime prep recruiting expert and producer of HSBI Report. As for young stars owing something to schools and coaches that nurture them, or to teammates with whom they make common cause, or even, preposterously enough, to alumni and fans who embrace them, Konchalski notes sourly, “Loyalty has gone by the wayside.”

Not to mention education and those glorious principles the amateurism crowd insist must guide intercollegiate athletics. These days, many premier players pass through college on a microwave developmental track, spurred by projections they’ll only need a season before talent propels them to the pros and instant riches. With one foot already out the door upon arrival, classes might seem a chore akin to dealing with the media horde that descends after every contest to catch insights falling from teenaged lips.

Increasingly, then, the more the ACC reasserts its standing as a top basketball league, the younger and less familiar the faces of those carrying its banner. Over the last decade, of six ACC players taken among the top five in the draft, five were one-and-done freshmen. Dig deeper, and of 11 ACC players taken among the top 10 in the NBA draft since 2007, eight were freshmen. None was a senior.

No wonder some four-year players feel compelled to fight the impression there’s something wrong with their game if they’re still in college.

The league’s single No. 1 draft pick during the past decade was Kyrie Irving. He played 303 minutes in 11 games for the Blue Devils in 2011, 32 more minutes than he played during the seven-game 2016 NBA Finals. In some respects the logic of Irving’s injury-plagued career was impeccable – it took the guard the same number of seasons to reach the 2015 Finals as it would have taken to earn an undergraduate degree, and one more year to win it all.

Irving, a stellar sidekick to Cleveland maestro LeBron James, was the only ACC player selected first in the draft during this century. He remains the conference’s sole No. 1 pick who left after a single season.

N.C. connections

That record distinctly differs from the preceding decade, 1997 through 2006. During that span plenty of players left with eligibility remaining, but among top-five picks the only freshmen were Georgia Tech’s Chris Bosh (2003) and UNC’s Marvin Williams (2005). Duke’s Elton Brand, the NBA’s No. 1 choice in 1999, was a sophomore.

Strikingly, there were just two ACC seniors selected among the top five in the past 20 NBA drafts: Wake’s Tim Duncan in 1997 and Duke’s Shelden Williams in 2006. Duncan, still active in 2016, is among the rare modern pros who stayed with the same team, the San Antonio Spurs, throughout an extended career. In doing so he defied the restlessness that’s similarly come to pervade college ball, where free agents are called graduate transfers.

Duncan additionally belongs to several exclusive North Carolina-related brotherhoods. Of 10 No. 1 NBA draft picks from the ACC, Duncan is among eight with ties to this state, joining Duke’s Art Heyman (1963), Brand and Irving; UNC’s James Worthy (1982) and Brad Daugherty (1986); N.C. State’s David Thompson (1975); and Maryland’s John Lucas (1976, from Durham). Only Virginia’s Ralph Sampson (1983) and Maryland’s Joe Smith (1995) had roots elsewhere.

Duncan earned another, rarer distinction as one of four NBA most valuable players with North Carolina ties. UNC’s Bob McAdoo (honored in 1971), a juco transfer, was a thoroughly Greensboro product. Tar Heel and Brooklyn, N.Y., native Michael Jordan (1988, 1991, 1992, 1996, 1998) and Davidson’s Stephen Curry (2015 and 2016) were raised in Wilmington and Charlotte, respectively. Curry and Finals nemesis James were both born in Akron, Ohio.

Duncan, the NBA’s MVP in 2002 and 2003, only played here. He grew up on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, untainted by the cloying attention of recruiters. In the big man’s four seasons at Wake, the Demon Deacons captured two conference titles and Duncan won numerous individual awards and a place in the ACC’s pantheon of greats. If it matters anymore, it’s highly unlikely similar membership in an enduring ACC elite will accrue to one-and-done freshmen who flash and go like fireflies.

This story was originally published June 26, 2016 at 10:00 AM with the headline "ACC caught in the middle of a sprint to the NBA — Jacobs."