When Dick Vitale recently handed me a signed copy of the book he wrote with Dick “Hoops” Weiss of the New York Daily News, I thanked him and told myself I only would read it if he listed former Bradley University great Hersey Hawkins among college basketball’s top 50 players since Vitale started screaming into a microphone during college basketball games in 1979.

Sure enough, there Hawkins was, listed at No. 38, too low for my taste, but at least not overlooked.

Hawkins, a 6-foot-3 center at Westinghouse High in Chicago, was overlooked by college basketball heavyweights, but Bradley coach Dick Versace offered him a scholarship after coming away from a private practice in which Hawkins played guard for two hours.

Hawkins gave the greatest college basketball performance I’ve ever witnessed live on Dec. 19, 1987. Covering the Cal-Irvine Anteaters, I watched Hawkins trigger a frightful gasp from the Peoria crowd when he was whistled for his third foul with 9:45 left in the first half, by which time he had scored 23 points. Hawkins sat out the rest of the first half and still managed to torch UCI for 51 points in a 139-119 victory for the Braves. The Anteaters’ volunteer assistant in charge of defense, former Bob Knight assistant Andy Andreas, quit after the game. Bradley coach Stan Albeck had Hawkins running figure 8s around screens all night long. He would catch it, shoot it, score it.

Later that season, Hawkins lit up Detroit, long after Vitale coached at the school, for 63 points. During his four-year career at Bradley, Hawkins scored 30 or more points 37 times.

The book, “Dick Vitale’s Fabulous 50 Players & Moments in College Basketball” ranks Danny Manning as the fifth-greatest player during Vitale’s time behind the mike. Vitale ranked Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing, Duke’s Christian Laettner, Virginia’s Ralph Sampson and North Carolina’s Michael Jordan ahead of Manning.

Vitale’s rules for selection rock, baby. They’re super fantabulous. No wonder the guy’s a PTA, prime-time announcer.

First, players’ NBA careers weren’t considered. Consistency, the ability to make teammates’ better and being crucial to the team’s success all were nice rules, but none were better than rule No. 4 of five: “Players that were one and done were not eligible for consideration.”

The one-and-done rule works for the NBA in one sense. It gives the league a year of free marketing for the next year’s leading Rookie of the Year candidates. It doesn’t work for college basketball in any way.

If the NBA ever went to Major League Baseball’s rule, both college basketball and the NBA would be better games. Let players declare themselves eligible for the NBA draft right out of high school, but if they decide to go to college, they can’t enter the NBA until three college seasons have passed.

You have to love Vitale for urging players to stay longer in college, especially those who are deluding themselves. After all, if Mario Chalmers had bolted after his sophomore season, his three-point shot against Memphis wouldn’t be ranked as the seventh-greatest moment. And if Manning hadn’t played four years, the miracle he pulled off with the Miracles wouldn’t have ranked 13th.