New York: Lennie Rosenbluth

There was some debate over who would be the New York representative, as the competition was rather impressive. But Lennie Rosenbluth won out because his legend at North Carolina is greater than the other contenders, a distinction well earned and that still lives today.

You can see the 86-year-old Rosenbluth at all of UNC’s home games in the Smith Center. He’s at each one sitting about a dozen rows or so behind Carolina’s bench. He’s a reminder of how good the Tar Heels were 62 years ago, which was perhaps when basketball had supplanted football as king on Tobacco Road.

The 1957 Tar Heels went 32-0 and defeated Wilt Chamberlain and Kansas for the national championship, a triple-overtime affair that would top any recent title games in drama with room to spare. Along with the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, no other team has been undefeated winning more games in the season than those Heels, and Rosenbluth was Carolina’s best player.

He was so good that in the 54-53 win over the Jayhawks to claim the national title, Rosenbluth scored 17 points while playing just 23 minutes. He was saddled with foul trouble all night, yet still affected the game in a big way.

Rosenbluth was the National Player of the Year that season, was a two-time All-America, the 1957 ACC Player of the Year, three-time All-ACC, 1957 NCAA Regional MVP, 1957 Final Four Most Outstanding Player and his jersey No. 10 is retired by UNC.

Yet, he rarely speaks about his personal accomplishments and is much more comfortable talking about teammates and that amazing title run in ’57.

“We had great camaraderie, we knew each other so well on the court,” Rosenbluth said in an interview with GoHeels.com in 2013. “And we anticipated when someone shot where the rebound was coming off and we just went for the boards.

“We were strong, we were aggressive, a very aggressive team. No one’s taking the ball from us, we were never losing a rebound, and that’s the way we felt.”

Rosenbluth averaged 28 points and 9 rebounds per game during the championship season. He’s fourth all-time in scoring at UNC with 2,045 points and holds the highest all-time scoring average for a career at Carolina with 26.9 points per game and the single-season scoring average leader with 28 points per outing in 1957.

His 985 points scored in a season is still a UNC record. He scored 40 or more points a UNC-record 5 times and is 20th all-time at UNC with 790 career rebounds.

Until Duke’s Christian Laettner in 1992, Rosenbluth was the only collegian to be named NCAA National Player of the Year, ACC Player of the Year, ACC Tournament MVP, and NCAA regional MVP in the same season.

Professionally, he was a first-round pick in the 1958 NBA draft, Rosenbluth played just two seasons in the NBA before moving on to other things.

Rosenbluth is also a member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.