Consensus first-team All American. National Player of the Year named by everybody from Sports Illustrated to the New England Journal of Medicine. Coaches, players, fans and commentators gush over Hansbrough's intensity, determination and work ethic. If we had a dollar for every time Jay Bilas says, "He never takes a play off," we'd have, well, a lot of dollars.

All that praise is richly deserved. Few players are as productive as Hansbrough, and nobody plays as hard as he does.

But not everybody is smitten. As a News & Observer story pointed out on Friday, Hansbrough has his critics. He gets rapped for not being "athletic" enough (to which Hansbrough replied, "Ask someone who has guarded me if they think I'm athletic"). Some question his potential as an NBA player, as if that were the only point of college basketball.

Most of all, he gets criticized for what one coach called his "herky-jerky" playing style.

No doubt about it, Hansbrough is not the game's most graceful player. Nobody's going to mistake him for a ballet dancer. He leads the nation in ugly shots -- awkward over-the-shoulder flips, twisting shot-put-style heaves, you name it.

But they go in. Which is kind of the point in a basketball shot. It's not figure skating. Style doesn't count.

So let the critics carp. This is being written before the Carolina-Kansas game in the NCAA semifinals Saturday night. But the outcome of that game, whatever it may be, doesn't change this: If we're choosing up sides, you can have anybody else you want. We'll take Tyler.