I told you when I made my Big East honors picks last week, the league LOOOOOOVES getting these awards press releases out as soon as they can. That’s why we got the All-Big East Teams announced on Sunday morning, about 12 hours after the regular season ended.
The big news for you, the discerning and attractive Marquette fan, is that freshman Nigel James was named to the All-Big East Third Team. He was also named to the All-Freshman team as one of four unanimous choices for that five man group.
Unsurprisingly,
the Big East press release is light on the details for anyone outside the First Team, so let’s go to the Marquette press release for more on James….. oh, that’s right, Marquette didn’t actually write a press release for this, just post a pass-through link to the Big East press release. Well, I can try a little bit, it’s just harder to tell you where James is relative to the other freshmen in the league.
Nigel James finished the regular season at #4 in scoring in the Big East with 16.4 points per game. During the 20 game league slate, the 72 inch guard raised his game, averaging 19.3 per game to finish second in the conference to only Xavier’s Tre Carroll. James also finished fourth overall in field goal percentage, third in assists per game, and fifth in steals per game. During Big East action, James finished sixth in field goal percentage, second in assists per game, and third in steals per game, ending up as one of just three guys to average more than two steals per game.
SPEAKING OF STEALS PER GAME, I presume that Chase Ross averaging a Big East best 2.3 steals per game overall this year and a Big East best 2.4 steals in conference play is why he is one of the five men on the All-Defensive team. Steals aren’t a be-all/end-all of determining whether or not you’re a good defender — that’s probably why Ross isn’t a unanimous choice — but it is kind of hard to ignore the guy leading the whole league, y’know?
The press releases on the Big East awards front will continue as the week goes along, including the announcement of Big East Player of the Year and Freshman of the Year. SPOILER ALERT: Zuby Ejiofor from St. John’s is the only unanimous choice on the All-Big East First Team, so I’m prrrrrrrreeeeetttttty sure he’s going to be POY. With four men earning every vote for the All-Freshman Team, it’s hard to say exactly who has an edge there. However, Villanova’s Acaden Lewis was a Second Team honoree, so I feel like my pick for Freshman of the Year has an edge over Nigel James for the moment.
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