Durant, Bennett deserve salutes
March arrives this week, and with it the headlong plunge into madness that will culminate in the NCAA championship game April 2 in Atlanta.
It’s almost time to start looking for this season’s George Mason. (Here’s a hint: It’s not George Mason. The Patriots are 15-14 and coming off a 23-point loss to Northeastern.)
But first, here are our picks for the best and worst of the season so far.
Player of the Year
1. Kevin Durant, Texas
2. Nick Fazekas, Nevada
3. Alando Tucker, Wisconsin
Hard to believe that in November the player-of-the-year talk was about Florida’s Joakim Noah and North Carolina’s Tyler Hansbrough.
Durant clearly deserves to become the first freshman to win a major national player-of-the-year award.
He has scored 30 or more points seven times, and 20 or more 23 times. He has 17 double-doubles, and began the week as the only player in the country ranked in the top five in scoring and rebounding, with averages of 24.7 points and 11.3 rebounds.
In the last 25 years, only eight players have finished in the top five in both categories in the same season – David Robinson, Xavier McDaniel and Hank Gathers among them.
A lanky 6-foot-9 slasher who hits the boards more than Tracy McGrady – the player he is most often compared to – Durant has made as many as five 3-pointers in a game.
Texas Tech coach Bob Knight made it clear he doesn’t care for the NBA minimum-age rule that could create a host of one-and-done players – Durant could be a top-two pick in this year’s NBA draft if he comes out – but he has called Durant’s performance this season “exceptional.”
He should: Durant had a 37-point, 23-rebound game against Knight’s team.
Fazekas plays in a lesser conference, the Western Athletic, but his numbers aren’t terribly far behind. He averages 20.9 points and 11.4 rebounds for 26-2 Nevada, proving good things can happen to players who go back to school after testing their NBA stock and finding it wanting.
Hardly anyone is a better advertisement for a senior leader than Wisconsin’s Tucker.
Still, in a season when Ohio State’s Greg Oden was supposed to be the freshman of the year, no one in any class has been as good as Durant.
“Remarkable,” Texas coach Rick Barnes said. “I don’t think in my wildest imagination I thought it would happen that way.”
Coach of the Year
1. Tony Bennett, Washington State
2. Thad Matta, Ohio State
3. Seth Greenberg, Virginia Tech
The hiring of Bennett to replace his father, Dick Bennett, might have made some people uncomfortable over nepotism issues, but no one can argue the point on merit: Tony might be better than his dad was, and his dad took Wisconsin to the 2000 Final Four.
Coaches around the Pacific 10 Conference say they knew Washington State wouldn’t finish last in the league as predicted – Washington coach Lorenzo Romar noted the Cougars swept his Sweet 16 team last season – but no one predicted a season when Washington State would rise to No. 9 in The Associated Press poll.
Ohio State’s Matta has the Buckeyes No. 1 in both polls with a freshman center and a freshman point guard – Oden and Mike Conley Jr. – and deserves enormous credit for getting them both to campus when many coaches made the mistake of assuming Oden would jump from high school to the NBA before the rule change, even though he insisted he was going to college all along.
Greenberg, the former Long Beach State coach now battling in the Atlantic Coast Conference, engineered a victory at Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium and a sweep of North Carolina in the same season. Enough said.
Busts of the Year
1. LSU
2. Connecticut
3. Alabama
LSU lost Tyrus Thomas from its Final Four team but had Glen “Big Baby” Davis back, then plunged from No. 5 in the preseason poll to out of the rankings. The Tigers are 15-13, and 4-10 in the Southeastern Conference – though they managed to upset defending NCAA champion Florida last week.
Connecticut, which lost to the NBA much of a team many believed should have gone to the Final Four last season, faked its way through an easy schedule to an 11-0 start but has gone 6-11 since, partly because A.J. Price hasn’t been the leader the Huskies needed at the point.
Alabama, No. 11 before the season, has been beset by the tragedies affecting Jermareo Davidson, whose girlfriend and brother died earlier this season, and injuries to star guard Ronald Steele. The Crimson Tide is 19-9, but only 6-8 in the SEC.
Conference of the Year
1. Atlantic Coast
2. Pacific 10
3. Southeastern
The Pac-10 lost some of its early sparkle with Arizona’s home loss to North Carolina, Washington’s loss at Pittsburgh and UCLA’s loss at West Virginia, although the Bruins’ loss was without Darren Collison in the lineup. Stanford’s victory at Virginia was a plus, but this debate will best be settled by what happens in the NCAA tournament.
(Crummy) Teammate of the Year
Illinois guard Jamar Smith was charged with drunk driving after leaving the scene of an accident, abandoning injured teammate Brian Carlwell – perhaps believing he had died, according to authorities in Champaign County, Ill.