This week, Duke got commitments from two Black players, Dame Sarr from Italy and Sebastian Wilkins from Massachusetts and no one gave it a single thought.
That wasn’t always the case though and in when Vic Bubas got things cranked up at Duke and got the Blue Devils to the Final Four in 1963 and 1964, the ACC was still segregated and there were a lot of good players who weren’t recruited because they were Black.
Among them was Lou Hudson.
Just down the road in Greensboro, Hudson was a talented wing who Dean Smith recruited but did not sign. Hudson was set to go to NC A&T but Minnesota offered and the Aggies coach told him he should take the opportunity, so he did.
He prospered as a Gopher and moved on to the NBA, where had a very successful career, primarily with the St. Louis / Atlanta Hawks (the Hawks have a complicated history, having started in Buffalo and then moving to Milwaukee and St. Louis before finally going to Atlanta in 1968).
He was an excellent offensive player and one of the better players to come out of North Carolina prior to the 1970’s, when we saw Bob McAdoo, Phil Ford, David Thompson, Walter Davis, John Lucas and Tommy Burleson, all overlapping within just a few years of each other.
He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2002. Like Sam Jones, he might have played in the ACC if it had not been segregated.