ACC One and Dones By The Numbers

The wave of one-and-done players may be cresting. A general understanding among the NCAA, NBA and the National Basketball Players Association allegedly will soon end the hopscotch single-season pause in college between high school and the pros.

Whether that happens sooner or later, the maneuver has most assuredly become more commonplace, especially at Duke, over the past few years.

Just since 2017 the ACC has seen 10 players selected after playing a single collegiate season, with eight taken in the first round of the NBA draft. Four of those first-rounders came through Duke. Two other Blue Devils, Gary Trent Jr. and Frank Jackson, went in the second round.

Eleven Devils were first-rounders as one-season collegians since Kylie Irving in 2011, with two more going in the second round.

One of the best to go early departed in 1975, the first season freshmen were eligible for varsity competition. Clemson’s Skip Wise, a 6-4 guard, was the only freshman chosen first team All-ACC until Georgia Tech’s terrific Kenny Anderson in 1990.

Wise immediately left to play for the American Basketball Association’s Baltimore Claws and wasn’t drafted by an NBA team.

With the Baltimore product perhaps serving as an inspirational model, in 1976 the ACC instituted a rookie of the year award (Won by Duke’s Jim Spanarkel). Last season’s winner was Duke’s Marvin Bagley III, who became the second player --after former Dukie Jahlil Okafur in 2015 -- to win both the rookie and player of the year awards in the same season.

Blue Devils won four of the last five ACC Rookie of the Year awards. They also earned three of the first four awards in the 1970s, ending with Gene Banks in 1978, then were shut off for 22 years until Chris Duhon was honored in 2001.