Valentine player of the year
George Washington wins first NIT title
HOUSTON — Denzel Valentine of Michigan State is The Associated Press Player of the Year, edging out Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield by three votes. Valentine is the first Spartans player to win the award.
Bill Self of Kansas won Coach of the Year after leading the Jayhawks to a 12th straight Big 12 title and the top overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Self and Valentine accepted the awards Thursday in Houston ahead of the Final Four.
Valentine received 34 of 65 votes from the national media panel that selects the weekly AP Top 25. Hield was the only other player to receive votes. Hield and Valentine were the only unanimous selections to the AP All-America team.
Valentine, a 6-foot-5 senior, led Michigan State (29-6) to a second-place finish in the Big Ten regular season and was the conference player of the year. He averaged 19.4 points, 7.6 rebounds and 7.6 assists while directing the Spartans’ offense. He shot 44.7 percent from 3-point range and 85.3 percent from the free throw line.
The Spartans were ranked No. 1 for four weeks and finished second in the final AP Top 25. They lost to Middle Tennessee State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Self received 21 votes. Chris Mack of Xavier was second with 15 votes and Dana Altman of Oregon received 13.
Self also won the AP Coach of the Year Award in 2009. Roy Williams, in 1992, was the only other Kansas coach to win the award.
The Jayhawks spent a total of five weeks at No. 1 this season and won the Big 12 again to move within one of UCLA’s record for consecutive titles.
NIT: In New York, George Washington won its first National Invitation Tournament championship, getting 18 points from Kevin Larsen and pulling away in the second half to beat Valparaiso 76-60 on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden.
Patricio Garino had 14 points and the fourth-seeded Colonials (28-10) set a school record for wins in a season.
Tyler Cavanaugh, the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, scored 12. He averaged 19.4 points and nine rebounds in five games.
George Washington used its 1-3-1 zone to hold Valparaiso star Alec Peters to two points in the second half. Peters finished with 15 and was the only double-figure scorer for the top-seeded Crusaders (30-7).
OKLAHOMA: Forward Khadeem Lattin’s grandmother died Thursday morning soon after he arrived in Houston for the Final Four.
His paternal grandmother Brenda Fair had been battling lung cancer. Lattin is from Houston and had hoped that his grandmother, who also lived here, could see him play this weekend.
Instead he says: “She’s a spirit now and she has my back no matter what.”
SYRACUSE: Senior guard Michael Gbinije might have played an NCAA Tournament game in Houston and could have been a part of a national title last year — had he stayed at Duke.
“I had a lot of people tell me, ‘Hey, if you would have stayed at Duke, you’d be a champion right now.’ That could be true, it may not,” Gbinije said Thursday in the Syracuse locker room. “I feel like just transferring was a better decision for me.”
BOEHEIM: Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim on whether he really does plan to leave at the end of the 2017-18 season, when his contract runs out: “I have no plans,” he said. Would winning it all this year possibly change those plans, and make him leave earlier — or later?
“I’ve always thought you should walk away when you can’t win anymore,” he said. “I don’t think you should walk away when you do win.”
EXEMPTION LAWS: For the second straight year, NCAA President Mark Emmert faced questions at his Final Four news conference about a state’s religious exemption law that critics say allows discrimination against gays, lesbians and others.
And for the second straight year, Emmert said the association is prepared to refrain from doing business in that state and others that create what it considers unwelcoming environments for studentathletes, coaches and fans.
Last year, Indiana was the target of Emmert’s remarks. This year it was North Carolina. With several states working on similar proposals, the NCAA has bound itself to a stance and an issue that shows no signs of going away. That could even lead to a more proactive approach in the future by the NCAA to stop these laws from being passed.
“We’re trying very hard to be situation-specific, to represent the views and values of intercollegiate athletics and higher education aggressively and to make people understand that we think some of these laws are movements in a direction that are not supportive of what we stand for and make it very, very hard, if not impossible, for us to operate in those states or those municipalities,” Emmert said.
North Carolina is now receiving similar attention for a law that has drawn many of the same criticisms.