By Will Despart
The Sporting Tribune
The John R. Wooden Award will celebrate it’s 50th anniversary this season. Leading up to the award ceremony on April 10, 2026, The Sporting Tribune in partnership with the Wooden Award and the Los Angeles Athletic Club will highlight past winners of the Wooden Award and the Legends of Coaching Award.
There’s been a lot of great Duke basketball teams since the Blue Devils’ emergence as a perennial power over three decades ago, but you can make a legitimate argument that the 2001 group is the standard all great Duke teams after it are attempting to live up to.
One of the main reasons that team was so dominant, going 35-4 and finishing with the highest KenPom rating of any modern national champion, was the dominance of senior Shane Battier. Battier capped off his illustrious college career by winning the 2001 Wooden Award before writing the storybook ending by defeating an Arizona team loaded with NBA talent in the national championship game.
During that memorable senior campaign, Battier averaged collegiate career highs of 19.9 points and 7.3 games on the offensive end while delivering a remarkable 4.4 stocks (steals + blocks) per game on the defensive end. Battier also had his most productive season from beyond the arc as a senior, making 124 of his 246 career 3-pointers in college during his National Player of the Year Campaign.
In the 2001 NCAA Tournament, Battier was borderline unstoppable. He scored at least 20 points in the Blue Devils’ first five games of the tournament through the Final Four and grabbed at least 10 rebounds in five of Duke’s six games during that run.
During Battier’s four-year career at Duke, the program won an NCAA record 133 games in a four year span while suffering just 15 losses while playing in an ACC conference that was arguably at its historic peak. Duke was a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament all four years Battier played for the Blue Devils and Battier himself tied the NCAA record for most wins by an individual player in a four-year span with 131.
A few months after closing his collegiate career in the most fitting of ways, Battier was selected by the Vancouver Grizzlies with the sixth overall pick in the 2001 NBA Draft. Battier went on to play for four teams in the NBA, winning back-to-back championships with the Miami Heat in 2012 and 2013. Battier also earned second team All-Defensive honors back-to-back seasons in 2008 and 2009 with the Houston Rockets.