No. 18: Lennie Rosenbluth

Every offseason, we run historical ranking series focusing on North Carolina basketball and football.

The purpose each spring isn’t to make declarative statements, but to have fun offering a subjective look at the best teams and players ever at Carolina. This effort is to generate discourse, debate, and take UNC fans down memory lane.

This season, we are doing something a little different, combining football and basketball, as we offer our take on the Top 40 UNC football and basketball players of all time. The criteria is quite simple: The process includes playing careers with the Tar Heels and professionally, other relevant impacts they’ve had on their sports, coaching, and championships. We also gave a lean toward all UNC accomplishments.

So, this isn’t a UNC-only list, a pro-only list, or a straight up purely best ever list. Some Tar Heels on this list didn’t have great pro careers but were so good and historic at UNC, they simply had to make the cut. Some on this list weren’t stars at UNC, but had outstanding and/or highly distinguished pro careers, that it warranted their place among these 40 athletes.

We hope you enjoy the list and feel free to disagree, as we know many will.

We continue our countdown with:

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

Rosenbluth is 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 per game and the single-season scoring average leader with 28 ppg in 1957. His 985 points scored in a season is still a UNC record. He scored 40 or more points a UNC record five times and is 19th all-time at UNC with 790 career rebounds.

He averaged 28 points and nine rebounds per game in leading the Tar Heels to a 32-0 season in 1957, capping it by UNC defeating Wilt Chamberlain and Kansas in triple overtime for the national championship. The 32-0 mark, equaled by the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, remains the best record ever in major college basketball.

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.

Obviously, his professional career pales compared to the other members on this list, but his greatness as a Tar Heel, what he helped UNC accomplish, and the importance of the 1957 team’s success in the school’s growing basketball foundation. The greatest Tar Heels as Heels were granted a bit of a bump.