The Highest-Scoring Blue Devils To Never Play In March Madness

Where do Vernon Carey and Cassius Stanley rank?

The shutdown of the college basketball season last month, due to the coronavirus pandemic. That means that, for the first time since the first NCAA Tournament in 1939, there was no March Madness.

A month later, two freshmen from the 2019-20 Blue Devils—Cassius Stanley and Vernon Carey Jr.—announced they were leaving school to enter the NBA Draft.

As Stanley told the media last week, “As a kid, I always wanted to play in March Madness. We wanted to and I wanted to play in the National Championship (game) and win it.”

Instead, Carey and Stanley both join a list that not many Duke players have joined recently: Blue Devils who never played in the NCAA Tournament.

Obviously, there have been a few additions to the list in recent years. Most are walk-ons who never saw a tournament game get far enough out of hand for them to get in at the end. Mike Buckmire and Brennan Besser are two recent examples. There are also players, like Sean Obi, who battled injury and weren’t available in March. Then there are the midyear transfers, like Jordan Tucker and Semi Ojeleye, who were elsewhere by the time the big dance rolled around.

Carey and Stanley were starters, however, who scored in double figures in games. Carey finished the season with 552 points, Stanley with 364. Has a Duke player ever scored that much and never played in the NCAA Tournament?

We decided to take a look. As it turns out, Carey isn’t Duke’s leading scorer to miss March Madness. He’s not even in the top 10.

Or the top 20.

Carey actually has the 28 highest point total for a Blue Devil who never played in the tournament, seven points behind Paul Schmidt and 14 ahead of Bob Vernon. Stanley is in 45 place, behind Dayton Allen and ahead of Fred Lind.

Of course, Carey’s situation isn’t a fair comparison to many of the names ahead of him on the list. Until 1975, when the tournament field expanded, only one team from each conference—the conference tournament winner in the ACC—got a bid to the NCAAs. That meant that there were plenty of three and four-year college careers that passed without a player getting a taste of March Madness.

If we look only at the players from the multiple-bid era, Carey and Stanley are both in the top 10, as is teammate Matt Hurt.

If things go according to plan, there’s a good chance Hurt will be able to remove his name from the list a little over 11 months from now.