N.C. State's Dennis Smith Jr. Primed to Become the Face of College Basketball

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — If Dennis Smith Jr. impresses on the court as much as he does in interviews, North Carolina State is going to have the best player in the country.

It's the year of the freshmen in the ACC. According to Scout, 23 of this year's top 100 recruits are joining what most believe will be the nation's best conference. Led by Duke at No. 1, the ACC has six of the top 13 classes.

Only one of those stud freshmen was at Wednesday's ACC media day, but Smith exuded more confidence than most of the seniors.

"There are no parts of me that think I'm not ready for anything that comes at me in life," Smith responded when asked about being the only freshman in the building.

Each team sent two players to the event, which was broken up into three groups of 10 to rotate between radio, TV and writer interviews. For the first two sessions with the writers, the crowd was evenly distributed. Duke and North Carolina drew a few more interviewers than others, but there were consistently multiple people waiting to speak with each player.

In the third session, though, Smith stole the show.

Throngs of media members surrounded the soft-spoken star, hanging onto his every word for nearly an hour. The rest of the room was so vacant that the players from Syracuse and Georgia Tech had more than ample time to check their phones or leave the room between interviews.

Everyone wanted a piece of the man that DraftExpress has projected for the No. 2 pick in the 2017 NBA draft.

He did not disappoint.

Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports and FanRag loves to tweet about "palpable buzz" surrounding various players. That's exactly what was felt throughout the Ritz-Carlton in uptown Charlotte, as several tables spent most of the lunch break raving about Smith's "swag."

Wolfpack head coach Mark Gottfried proclaimed last month, per N.C. State's official website, "Dennis Smith is the best guard in the country—period, hands down." He added Wednesday, "[Dennis] is going to be the face of our team this year. I've told NBA guys I'd build my franchise around him."

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Pressed for a response to that praise, Smith said, "I'm not too surprised by it, to be honest. I work so hard, and he sees the hard work I put in. ... Coach insisted that I be the leader of the team and kind of gave me the keys."

The other ACC coaches are left wishing Smith was driving their vehicles this year. According to Scout.com, Duke, North Carolina and Wake Forest were among the teams that extended an offer to him.

"I saw Dennis a lot," said North Carolina head coach Roy Williams. "Think he's a phenomenal player. Going to be a phenomenal college player. Going to be a phenomenal NBA player. He's got a high degree of ability, and he's competitive, too. ... We would have loved to have recruited Dennis more successfully."

Even with Harry Giles, Jayson Tatum and Jonathan Isaac on the table, Smith was voted the preseason ACC Rookie of the Year. He was also selected to the All-ACC first team alongside seniors Jaron Blossomgame and London Perrantes and juniors Grayson Allen and Joel Berry II.

T.J. Warren (24.9 PPG) and Cat Barber (23.5 PPG) have done a ton of scoring for the Wolfpack in recent years, but Smith has the potential to be their best overall player since David Thompson became the No. 1 pick in the 1975 NBA draft.

The Cream of an Incredible Crop

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Kevin Stallings has yet to coach a single game in the ACC, but Pittsburgh's new head coach was one of many marveling over the depth of talent in the conference.

"It has the potential to be the best league in history," said Stallings.

"It's not a lot different from what the Big East was," added Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim.

Roy Williams and Louisville head coach Rick Pitino rattled off the teams they each need to face twice this season, noting that there are no nights off in this league. Virginia Tech head coach Buzz Williams spoke at length about how difficult the slate already is and how much tougher it's going to get in 2019-20, when the ACC increases from 18 to 20 conference games per year.

But Duke is at the top of that mountain as the favorites to win the 2017 national championship.

"Our guys are as advertised," said Duke senior Amile Jefferson about the highly touted freshmen joining the team. "Practices are harder than some of our games are going to be."

Before you get any thoughts of throwing around words like "platoons" with Duke's absurd talent and depth, head coach Mike Krzyzewski said, "It's not going to be equal minutes."

Transfers Abound

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Whether you want to call it an epidemic or simply a growing trend, transfers were a major topic of conversation.

Of the 30 players in attendance, six were former transfers, including Miami's Kamari Murphy, Pittsburgh's Sheldon Jeter and Clemson's Avry Holmes.

Among the non-attendees, Virginia's Austin Nichols, Louisville's Tony Hicks, Syracuse's Andrew White III and North Carolina State's Terry Henderson all figure to be crucial players in their new homes.

As is the case with SEC teams turning to junior college transfers to try to keep up with Kentucky's annual restocking of one-and-done stars, most of the ACC has taken to the D-I transfer market in hopes of competing with Duke and North Carolina.

Both Pitino and Boeheim expressed sympathy for the programs negatively impacted by the increase in transfers but shrugged it off, concluding it's good for the players and good for the teams able to get them.

Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey—whose program has not added a single D-I transfer in at least three years—was a bit more concerned about the pattern.

"We're worried it's going to turn into free agency."

Buzzword of the Day: Versatile

Pass-first point guards and back-to-the-basket centers are dying breeds. Nowhere is that more apparent than the ACC, where positions have nothing to do with height, and players are expected to fill multiple roles.

Guards are expected to rebound. Bigs are more valuable when they can shoot. And the wild cards in this conference are the teams that have multiple players in both of those buckets.

Notre Dame's Bonzie Colson is a 6'5" center. Pittsburgh's Jamel Artis is a 6'7" point forward. Florida State's Jonathan Isaac is a 6'11" wing. Two of the best three-point shooters in the ACC are 6'8" V.J. Beachem and 6'7" Jaron Blossomgame.

"We have the personnel to be versatile," said North Carolina State's Abdul-Malik Abu about the likelihood of playing small ball.

"One thing that should be apparent about our team is that we're very versatile, very flexible," said Stallings.

It may be a few months before most of these teams figure out their ideal rotations—but only because there are so many combinations to choose from.

Breakout Star or Firefighter?

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Before he started dunking on foes, Louisville's Donovan Mitchell was dousing make-believe flames.

Put guys through three hours of questioning, and some weird anecdotes are bound to eventually surface. Of all the day's unique stories, though, none were more entertaining than Mitchell's tale of childhood imagination.

"When I was being babysat, I played the same fireman video over and over again for about an hour. ... I would put on a sweatsuit with like the fireman straps and get on the couch to drive and then get off and fight the fire. I saved a bunch of people. A lot of lives were saved in my years of fighting those pretend fires."

Nowadays, though, he's merely the best player on a title contender and one of the top candidates in the country for a breakout sophomore year.

"He's a willing passer, terrific scorer, good free-throw shooter," said Pitino. "He's got a little Terry Rozier in him. He rebounds from the backcourt, and that's something we need."

One other interesting tidbit on Mitchell: Despite growing up as a fan of North Carolina, he has been converted to believe that Louisville vs. Kentucky is the greatest rivalry in any sport.

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes obtained firsthand.

Stats are courtesy of KenPom.com and Sports-Reference.com. Recruiting information is courtesy of Scout.com.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.