Senior Ryan Jackson owes Major League Baseball a big "thank you" for not picking him in last season's amateur draft.
The pitcher/outfielder was overlooked in last year's draft, making the decision to return to Duke for his senior year an easy one. And he certainly made his final season count.
This week, Jackson was selected as both Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year and Collegiate Baseball national player of the year. Neither award had ever been won by a Duke player.
"[Not being drafted] increased my desire to go out and prove the scouts wrong," Jackson said. "Regardless of where it was, I just thought I should have been drafted last year and given the chance. But look at what I would have been missed out on.
"I can't look back and say [not being drafted] was a mistake by any stretch, because national player of the year--what more can one ask for? This is something that nobody can ever take away from me."
Head coach Steve Traylor talked with Jackson after his junior season and told his star he had the potential to be an All-American.
"There were two ways to handle not getting drafted," Traylor said. "One was to feel like you got shafted, or two was to say, `I need to play better. I need to put up better numbers. I need to be a more impressive player.'
"I had that conversation with him at the end of the year and said, `You can be disappointed and think that you should have been drafted, but you really didn't do anything special. You got the talent to come back and be an All-American next-year."'
Jackson did even better than that. He was recognized as the nation's best player, a remarkable accomplishment coming from a team that gets little national exposure.
"I didn't expect this at all," Jackson said. "It's one of the greatest things I've ever had."
Jackson impressed ACC coaches, who voted on the conference player of the year award, by whacking a school season record 22 home runs (the previous record was 13). Jackson also batted .378 while knocking in 63 RBI's.
His ACC-best 34-game hitting streak brought him not only conference, but also national recognition.
Making Jackson's conference honor more impressive was the fact that the ACC was filled with potential first-round draft picks this season. Among those was Georgia Tech catcher Jason Varitek, drafted last year in the first-round by the Minnesota Twins.
"There are probably, at a minimum, 10 first-round draft choices in the ACC this year," Traylor said. "And out of the top 10 or 15 picks, there are probably six coming out of our conference. I don't think there has ever been a year in the ACC where they have had that many first-rounders, that many that high. It's generally considered the strongest the conference has ever been."
Jackson hopes that his new found status as the premier player in the ACC will give him an advantage in the upcoming June 2 draft.
"It definitely makes me feel good that I'm amongst first-round picks right now," Jackson said. "I'm just hoping that will raise my stock, so that I'll get drafted even higher."
Collegiate Baseball magazine agreed with Traylor that the ACC was baseball's best conference, and thus decided that it's National Player of the Year would be the ACC Player of the Year.
"I talked to Lou Pavlovich, the writer who covered the article [in Collegiate Baseball]," Jackson said. "He seemed to think that the ACC was the best conference in the nation right now, and said they were willing to go along with the ACC player of the year as the national player of the year."
Yet despite all of the honors that Jackson has received over the past few days, none of them can take away the disappointment of not going to the NCAA regionals.
"I'd give [all the honors] back just to go get that regional bid, just to continue playing," Jackson said.
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