There are five Big East men’s basketball games left to go. Creighton drew the straw for the final bye spot in the schedule, so their 20 game conference slate is already over. In one week’s time, the first round of the conference tournament will already be over and the quarterfinals will be underway.
And so, we’d better make some Big East award picks/predictions. You know the Big East loooooooves to start slipping those award press releases out just as soon as the season ends. If we’re going to make picks that
aren’t influenced by those releases, we have to get a jump on things before the season actually wraps up.
Okay, let’s get into it!
Big East Player of the Year: Zuby Ejiofor, St. John’s
The list of guys who have been Player of the Week this season does not lend itself to a runaway winner in this category. Zuby Ejiofor has only earned that honor twice this season, and only Butler’s Michael Ajayi and Providence’s Jaylin Sellers match him. No one has more. However, Ejiofor does have five Weekly Honor Roll appearances to his credit, and that gives him seven weeks in the season where he was one of the six most notable players in the league in any given week.
And so I point at his consistency across the board in contributing to a St. John’s team that is currently tied for first place in the Big East and ranked #18 in the country:
- #7 in the Big East in points per game
- #7 in rebounds per game
- #9 in assists per game
- #4 in blocks per game
He’s way down at #19 in the league in steals per game, but that’s still 1.2 per game. That’s for the full season. Drop it to just league play, and Ejiofor is ranked higher in every category except rebounding where he’s still #7.
You can make cases for other guys, I think there’s reasons to vote for other players, and I’m willing to listen to your points. But Zuby was the preseason POY, and no one has obviously taken it from him.
Big East Freshman of the Year: Acaden Lewis, Villanova
This is a “What do you want to vote for?” category.
Do you want to vote for the guy with five Freshman of the Week trophies scattered across the entire season who is second in the league in assists per game across the whole season, and who is the point guard on a team with a first year head coach that is going to sail into the NCAA tournament without a doubt?
or
Do you want to vote for the guy who has four of the last six Freshman of the Week awards, who is #2 in the league during conference play in scoring and #2 in assists per game as well, but he plays for a team that’s experiencing one of the 10 worst winning percentages in 109 years of program history and the worst in nearly 40 years?
#1 is Acaden Lewis. #2 is Nigel James. I’ll listen to your vote for James, for obvious bias reasons. But Nova’s not an NCAA at-large team without Lewis playing the way he has been playing all year long.
Big East Coach of the Year: Kevin Willard, Villanova
Yeah, it’s a bit of rewarding a guy for being better than expected relative to the preseason poll, and I generally don’t like doing that. But we can’t say it’s Rick Pitino after St. John’s was picked to win the league and they spent four weeks outside the AP top 25, including one week where they didn’t even get a vote at all. I’ll listen to votes for Dan Hurley because UConn has lived up to their billing as a national contender all season long, and there’s clearly an argument for him. I’m still going to go with Willard, who assembled a roster on the fly — Tyler Perkins is the only returning rotation guy — for his first year in charge and has Villanova right back where the Wildcats faithful expects them to be.
All-Big East Team
Silas Demary, UConn
Zuby Ejiofor, St. John’s
Bryce Hopkins, St. John’s
Acaden Lewis, Villanova
Tarris Reed, UConn
I made a decision here: No one outside the NCAA tournament teams are getting on this All-Big East team. Seven of the 11 teams in this conference are finishing league play under .500. The door was wiiiiiiiiide open for someone to punch their way through to a winning record, and no one did it. Seton Hall is 40 minutes away from finishing .500 in league play after going 10-1 in non-conference action and starting out 4-1 in the league. They’re 6-8 since. I can’t vote for a Pirate on this squad, and I can’t vote for anyone below them as one of the five best players in the league.
And so: Demary and Reed from UConn, Ejiofor and Hopkins from St. John’s, and Lewis from Villanova. I went with those two Huskies because I can’t really take Solo Ball when he’s not shooting the ball very well this year. Hopkins joins Ejiofor because he’s the only other Red Storm player to start all 30 games this season as Rick Pitino shuffles his lineups over and over again, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s the #2 scorer. Lewis isn’t VU’s leading scorer, but if he’s my vote for FOY because of his impact on an NCAA tourney team, I think that’s enough to put him through here.
The comments section is wide open as always for you to tell me exactly how wrong I am. Have fun!
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