Our selections for AP Big East awards
For the first time, the Associated Press will be releasing All-Big East men’s basketball teams, as well as individual honors this season, and we’re happy to be one of the voters.
A group of 11 media members, one from each Big East outpost, will select five-man first and second teams, along with Player of the Year, Coach of the Year and Newcomer of the Year. The results will be released on Tuesday.
This is separate from the Big East’s own allleague and individual honors selections, which are chosen by the league’s coaches and announced on different days next week. We’re guessing there will be some differences between the AP writers’ and coaches’ decisions, especially since the latter often don’t involve perhaps as much introspection. Coaches do have bigger things going on at this time of the season.
It’s always a fun process choosing such awards, but it was particularly difficult this season. For one, the league is bristling with talented players, several of whom will someday be playing in the NBA, some as early as next season. Determining Player of the Year was extremely tough, as was limiting just five players to each team.
Then there was the Newcomer of the Year conundrum. The definition for the award specifically states the following: Doesn’t necessarily have to be a freshman. It can be any player, regardless of class, in his first season playing for a Big East team.
A Freshman of the Year category may be added next year. But for this year, the winner from the Big East (and, in fact, the five other “power” conferences) does not have to be a freshman.
We decided to limit the scope to freshmen. Otherwise, the runaway winner would be either Providence’s Bryce Hopkins or Xavier’s Souley Boum, who transferred to the league this season from Kentucky and UTEP, respectively. Both are strong candidates for Player of the Year and easy picks for first team All-Big East. We like the idea of the freshmen having their own award.
Two other conundrums: Which statistics to consider for these awards, and what to do with Xavier’s Zach Freemantle. We decided to go with stats put up in conference play only. Non-conference competition vary too much among the league’s teams. Everyone’s on an even playing field with league-only stats.
Here’s the best we could do with our selections:
PLAYER OF THE YEAR: Tyler Kolek, Marquette
We really struggled with this one. Up until Wednesday night, we were leaning towards Providence’s Hopkins, who delivered one of the most dominant performances we witnessed first-hand this season, a 27-piece in a win over UConn on Jan. 4. He leads the Big East in scoring and is second and rebounding. He’s real good.
But on Wednesday night, Hopkins went 4for-11 from the field and couldn’t prevent a home loss to Xavier. Obviously,
one game doesn’t make a difference, but we also can’t get out of our mind the fact that he didn’t grab a single rebound (zero, zip, nada) in a blowout loss at UConn last week. In fact, he’s struggled a bit down the stretch, scoring just six points in 17 foul-plagued minutes in a win over Gerogetown over the weekend.
Kolek has come up biggest when Marquette has needed him the most. He scored 18 points and had two go-ahead baskets in the final minute to lead the Golden Eagles to a huge road win at Creighton last week. He doled out 24 assists over the past two games that clinched a tie for the regular-season title, then the outright title.
COACH OF THE YEAR: Shaka Smart, Marquette
With so many tough choices, this was an incredibly easy one. Marquette was picked to finish ninth in the league after losing a host of players (including leading scorer Justin Lewis). The Golden Eagles wind up winning their first outright Big East regularseason title. Smart is not only an easy choice for league Coach of the Year, he’s a strong candidate for National Coach of the Year. In fact, we voted for him for that honor in another recent poll.
NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR: Alex Karaban
It was tough enough determining this should solely go to a freshman. But which freshman? Villanova’s Cam Whitmore was named preseason Freshman of the Year. He’s a potential NBA lottery pick in June, and he’s probably got the best numbers among the league’s frosh — 12.4 ppg, 5.4 rpg.
But we felt Karaban has a little more of an impact on his team: scoring (9.3), rebounding (4.6), 3point shooting (39.1 percent) and reliability (29.7 minutes per game, second on the team in league play).
ALL BIG EAST TEAMS
Our final conundrum: Do we put two UConn players on first team? The Huskies are likely to finish fifth in the league, though they still could finish fourth and even third. Either way, does that merit two first-team selections?
FIRST TEAM
Tyler Kolek, Marquette; Bryce Hopkins, Providence; Souley Boum, Xavier; Jordan Hawkins, UConn; Adama Sanogo, UConn
SECOND TEAM
Joel Soriano, St. John’s; Ryan Kalkbrenner, Creighton Kam Jones, Marquette; Eric Dixon, Villanova; Colby Jones, Xavier