You can have that silly official list of All-Big East and POY (coming tomorrow) stuff. Made up of votes from coaches in the conference. What do they know?
Here’s the results of a Big East Bloggers roundtable. A big thanks to the East Coast Bias for deciding to pull this together.
DeJuan Blair took home player of the year honors amongst BE Bloggers. Lots of good stuff in the polling. Including a lot of underrated/overrated things. On the all BE-team. A fun read.
Meanwhile, John Gasaway at Basketball Prospectus picks DeJuan Blair over Blake Griffin for national POY (hat tip to Joe).
Sure enough, Blair is the more efficient offensive weapon, but the magnitude of the difference here (keeping in mind that Griffin’s offensive rating is of course excellent in its own right) can’t be attributed to workload alone. Part of it is Blair’s superiority on the offensive glass. Another factor helping Blair in this comparison is that he commits fewer turnovers than Griffin does, even when adjusted for each player’s prominence in their offense. At least one part of this difference in efficiency, however, can be explained even more simply: Blair shoots fewer free throws. With these two players, that’s a good thing.
That being said, throw Griffin at any of ten recent seasons and I’d wager you’d find me supporting him for POY in six or seven of them. Alas, this year is different.
DeJuan Blair is both one of the most efficient offensive players in the nation and the second best defensive rebounder in major-conference hoops over the past five seasons. His unprecedented offensive rebounding has played a major role in making his team quite possibly the single most effective offense in the country. When he’s in foul trouble, Pitt fans get visibly nervous. When he’s not, they have the sense that their team can do anything, up to and including beating Connecticut twice. He flipped Hasheem Thabeet over his head. He wears what appear to be headbands on his biceps. He even commits steals.
It’s enough to make him my Player of the Year. Congratulations, DeJuan.
Nice.
#2 is fine with me right now….let unc handle the pressure of being the #1 overall seed…give us the #1 in indy with duke or oklahoma as our 2 and lets see it play out from there……
I had no problem going with Terrance Williams as BE poy. He was the clear leader on the team. He assumed point-forward duties when it was clear that none of the guards on the Cardinals team could handle the job.
So in BE play, he was: 5th in A/TO ratio, shot 42% on 3s (5th in BE) and 47% overall, averaged 2.1 steals (4th), 5.3 assists (3d in BE), 8.4 rebounds (8th) and averaged 13.2 ppg.
Plus, he is an excellent defensive player overall.
That to me is an excellent blending of duties. No, none are exactly eye-popping but its that he did double-duty so effectively that is impressive.
He was the Cards most important player all season.
He is completely worthy in my opinion.
it will be interesting to see if blair makes it close in the naismith/wooden or if griffen runs away with it……
1. Blair
2. Williams
3. McNeal
4. Thabeet
5. Harangody
Obviously Fields deserves to be up there but Harangody did well this year. Sure he played for a ND team that didn’t show much this season but he has to be given credit for what he has done(24ppg,12rpg). My Coach of the Year award goes to Jamie Dixon, hands down(bias though). Keno Davis will probably win this but he has done a great job for that school.
Everyone is going to have different choices. It’s not easy choosing a POY this season, we have 3 teams in the top 5. That means some really good players on those rosters.
All Conference Team by position:
PG: L. Fields
SG: J. McNeal
SF: S. Young
PF: L. Harangody
C: D. Blair
POTY: Blair
I think the worst atrocity I’ve seen is the person who voted for Jim Calhoun for coach of the year. Really? A preseason top 5 team that stayed in the top 5 for most of the season gets you CotY? “Handling adversity” by having your fourth best player go out with injury and going 5-2 without him is coach of the year honors? (And I’ll gladly argue any day that Dyson is less valuable than Price, Adrien or Thabeet. Price is their clear general, Adrien is their best scorer, and Thabeet is dominant on defense, whereas Dyson was a tremendous role player.)
Coach of the year is Rick Pitino. 16-2 (record number of wins in the conference, I believe) with a win over the next best team in the league. That’s enough for me. Remember, we’re talking about in our league, not what you did in Nov/Dec against Western Kentucky.
2. Jamie
3. Keno Davis
4. Jay Wright
5. Buzz Peterson
6.
6. Calhoun
7. Huggins
8. Boeheim
9. Cronin
10. Stan Heath
11. Bobby Gonzalez
12. Norm Roberts
13. Fred Hill
14. John Thompson III
15. Jerry Wainwright
16. Geno Auriemma
17. Brandin Knight
18. Barry Rohrssen
19. Chas from Pitt Blather
352. Barack Obama
1,203. Tim Welsh
66,239. me
139,035,593,946,642,636,230,677. Mike Brey
139,035,593,946,642,636,230,678. *
* — It is not possible to have been a worse coach than Mike Brey this year.
Chaz, I’m sure more than a few of the messages on the other BE boards is how the guy from Pitt didn’t even vote for Blair as POY.
thx!
About the game- I’m dubious now of UConn’s ability to advance significantly in the tournament. Dyson-less, they only have price as a scorer. Both Thabeet and Adrien, excellent players, are much more opportunistic scorers than anything else. UConn plays great defense and is a very smart team, but I’d be very surprised if they advance too far unless it’s on guts and lucky match-ups.
Sam Young played probably his best career game. And he was visibly, emotionally jacked the whole time. Great to see. The two alley-oop dunks in the second half were amazing, but I loved the first half finger roll around Gavin Edwards. Very,very purdy….Tyrell Biggs. What can you say to 0 points from a starter? But even at half-time, there were hoops-savvy folks in the crowd impressed with his contributions. He was around the ball all day, played good defense, and took up space in a good way…Dixon’s defense was excellent, but I’m now of the opinion that Wannamaker may be our second best defensive player. That dude is a tough, physical guy. I like that when he fouls, he does it hard. Seriously, I’m betting he gets into at least one on court jawing or pushing match before he ends his career. I’m not quite so high on his offense yet as he needs to do a better job of finishing. But it’s obvious he’s stepping up. Dixon picked up a few tough fouls, but as the game wears on, his arms seem to grow longer. And he has the most uncanny finishing ability. Defensively, we really stepped it up to the full necessary intensity. Hopefully the last two games served as a ramp up for the post-season. Now, Levance Fields.
Here’s the thing. Kemba Walker is 4 years younger. Healthy. Has two inches on him. And can probably score higher on every conceivable speed and agility test you can concoct. And yet, as much as he tried to get into Levance Fields jock, he could not limit him below a double-double. Fields is just amazing. I love going to sporting events for the sheer athleticism of a graceful, sculpted body flying through the air or whatever. But I find there is just something incredibly appealing and magnificent about watching him play. I’ve seen him in person about a dozen times and it’s like somehow watching the construction at ground zero, with all that heavy machinery navigating around a huge labyrinth, in fast, sped-up motion. Okay, not the best analogy. I looked all over Oakland for a gold #2 jersey, but never found one…
SilverPanther’s National POY- Blake Griffin
SP’s Big East POY- Dejuan Blair
SP’s All Big East- Harangody, Blair, Williams, Young, McNeal. Levance would be on my second team instead of Matthews.
FYI, I’m doing my BET drinking at Rattle N’ Hum on 33rd–> link to rattlenhumbarnyc.com. Time for all us to ditch the talk of accolades and rankings and focus in on the grand prize. Tunnel vision. Luke Skywalker pushing away the instruments. All the Force now baby. Stay on target. Stay on target…
On topic somewhat, I’m really thinking ND is gonna beat WVU Wednesday and we’ll end up playing them, just a hunch.
There are some other Michigan craft brewers out there and I could have sworn there was one that I really, really enjoyed, but can’t think of it at the moment. May have to make my own trip to 3 Sons and see what I can dig up. I’m overdue anyway.
What a time to be at the Pete. After the game, we met Julius Page and Jerome Lane who upon seeing my Nate Bailey shooting shirt, marveled, “That looks familiar!” And promises to let Nate, who’s now an attorney in Ohio, that it’s in good shape. And that I didn’t actually steal it!
*Founder’s Breakfast Stout- Blacker than black.
*Brooklyn Chocolate Stout- Melts in your mouth not in your glass.
*Dogfish Head World Wide Stout- Crappy design on the label, great design on the beer.
*Goose Island Bourbon County Stout- Aged in bourbon barrels. Drink out of a snifter. When drinking this, do not operate heavy machinery, use scissors, discuss emotional issues with your wife, or do anything that involves coordination. 13% ABV.
If we make the Final Four, I’m considering digging into one of my rare bottles of Brooklyn Black OPS–> link to beeradvocate.com. Only 940 cases were produced.
hopefully they can dominate the rest of the NCAA field like they dominated uconn. honestly, if Pitt plays like they did on saturday, then they win the national championship. i know, it is a big if.