Mike DeCourcy

My good friend Dave Telep, recruiting analyst at Scout.com, is on my case. He insists I've got several of this year's freshmen ranked too low at their positions in the Sporting News College Basketball yearbook, which is just hitting newsstands this week.

North Carolina's Ty Lawson is ranked No. 13 among point guards. Washington's Spencer Hawes is 13th among centers. North Carolina's Wayne Ellington is No. 10 among shooting guards. Telep says they're all too low, and that scares me, because he knows young basketball talent as well as anyone.

As I've written before, my goal when including freshmen in the rankings is just to get the ones who have a legitimate chance to make an impact on the list, because it's hard to tell how comfortable the transition for any of these players — and their coaches — will be. To make my point, I asked Telep how much better Lawson is coming into college hoops than Raymond Felton was in 2002. He says just a bit. Well, Felton averaged 12.9 points and 6.7 assists his first year — pretty doggone good, but nothing to make me sorry for ranking him 10th entering the season.

Here is what I do know about this year's rookies: together, they are the best class to enter college basketball since at least 1995 and will make a dramatic difference in how the year plays out. And they could become one of the best classes ever.

For SN's yearbook, I prepared a list of great freshman classes that will be the standard by which this group is measured:

1977
Magic Johnson, Michigan State; Gene Banks, Duke; Albert King, Maryland; Kelly Tripucka, Notre Dame, Jeff Ruland, Iona. They changed what people expected from freshman players.

1979
Isiah Thomas, Indiana; Dominique Wilkins, Georgia; James Worthy, North Carolina; Ralph Sampson, Virginia; Clark Kellogg, Ohio State. I could have listed another 20 guys from this class — it was that deep.

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1981
Michael Jordan, North Carolina; Patrick Ewing, Georgetown; Ed Pinckney, Villanova; Chris Mullin, St. John's; Milt Wagner, Louisville. In the book "Legends Of College Basketball", we at Sporting News ranked Mullin, Ewing and Jordan among the top 30 players of all time.

1988
Alonzo Mourning, Georgetown; Christian Laettner, Duke; Malik Sealy, St. John's; Chris Jackson, LSU; Billy Owens, Syracuse. Every one of these guys was a star from the beginning.

1995
Stephon Marbury, Georgia Tech; Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, North Carolina; Paul Pierce, Kansas; Chauncey Billups, Colorado. From here on out, most freshman classes were spoiled by the draft. This one lost Kevin Garnett, but was strong enough to still make a difference.

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From that list, I contend 1981 was the greatest class. Jordan, Mullin and Ewing were giants of the game. And remember, it does not matter who came in with Lew Alcindor or Wilt Chamberlain or Jerry West. They're not part of this argument. They did not play as freshmen.

So if you're up for a debate, there's plenty of space below to join the fun.