Duke Blue Devils News

Kentucky and UConn will play for the national title on Monday night and, shortly afterward, the 28th annual rendition of One Shining Moment will show the highlights of the tournament. 

While no ACC teams made the Final Four, several stand a good chance of making the video. Duke’s upset loss to Mercer is a no-brainer, as is the controversial end to UNC’s loss to Iowa State. 

Which led us to wonder, how well has the ACC been represented in One Shining Moment?  We went back to 1987, the first year CBS put the video together, and watched them all, straight through. Our keyboard is covered with sap and man tears, but we managed to put together some stats for you. 

All ACC-related teams were included, regardless of their conference at the time. That means that ’87 Syracuse and ’12 Louisville are included, as is Maryland. 

Overall, the ACC teams had 424 clips. Here are the One Shining Moments that were most and least ACC heavy.

And here’s a rundown of the ACC teams’ Shining Moments: 

Duke      113

UNC        104

Syracuse  62

Louisville  35

Maryland  28

Ga Tech    23

Notre Dame 9

Boston Coll  9

Florida St      7

Wake Forest  7

NC State        6

Pittsburgh     6

Miami            6

Clemson        4

Virginia          4

Va Tech         1

Duke was led by clips of players hugging. They had 13 of those. The other 15 teams had a total of 15.

Duke also led in clips of their guys getting dunked on. Duke was posterized nine times in the videos. The rest of the ACC had 13. 

UNC led the ACC in non-hugging celebrations, with 17, most of them courtesy of one player–Rashad McCants.

The 2005 video was one Rashad McCants mugging moment after another. He made the video popping his jersey, jumping for joy, saluting, pumping his fist, and shirtless, holding up his jersey after the win. However, he was just the second biggest camera hog of that year. 

ACC single-season clip leaders

Jawad Williams, UNC, 2005       8

McCants, UNC, 2005                 7

Tyler Hansbrough, UNC, 2009   6

Shane Battier, Duke, 2001         5

Christian Laettner, Duke, 1992  5

The one-year performance by Jawad Williams ties him for the ACC career lead, with Hansbrough’s three-video total of eight. Laettner, Battier, and Brian Davis were all behind McCants’ one-year total with six clips.

Among coaches, Mike Krzyzewski is the all-time leader with 10 clips. Roy Williams and Jim Boeheim have five (not including several Williams Kansas clips). Rick Pitino has three clips with Louisville, tying him with Bobby Cremins and Dean Smith.

In a bizarre editing choice, all three Cremins clips, in 1987, 1990, and 1996, showed him pounding his chest and were used to coincide with the lyric, “feel the beat of your heart.”

In another bizarre editing choice, five of Notre Dame’s nine clips were of their leprechaun mascot.   

And finally, here are the single-season team leaders in video clips

We’ll keep an eye on this year’s video and have some updated stats and other interesting facts for you tomorrow.