Duke basketball: Top 10 ACC players for 2020-21 season

No. 1 in the ACC this season is not a Duke basketball player

At the moment, Garrison Brooks seems to be the most popular preseason pick among media members to capture the ACC Player of the Year crown. As painful as it is for this Duke basketball fan to admit a North Carolina name should be No. 1 on any list, there is indeed evidence to support the notion that the 6-foot-10, 240-pound senior is in store for unmatched stats this season.

First, Brooks is the only current player who was an All-ACC Second Team performer in 2019-20 (no First Team selections are back). As a freshman two years prior, he drew starts in roughly half of North Carolina’s games, before becoming a full-time starter as a sophomore and junior.

As a junior last season, though anchoring the paint for a UNC team that wound up last in the ACC and with an abysmal 14-19 overall record, Brooks led the ACC in made field goals while finishing second in field goal percentage, total rebounds, and free throw attempts. At 16.8 points and 8.5 boards per game, he was fairly close to averaging a double-double (a real possibility this season).

Now, determined to flip the switch in Chapel Hill to the win position, Brooks is in a position to be a leader and mentor for a deep collection of talented post presences. That collection includes three centers who were five-stars in high school: sophomore Armando Bacot, freshman Day’Ron Sharpe, and freshman Walker Kessler.

Other than an injury or another losing season for the Tar Heels — fingers crossed on the latter — perhaps the best chance for someone other than Garrison Brooks to win ACC Player of the Year would be for the presences of Bacot, Sharpe, and Kessler to ding the 21-year-old’s total production.

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