This week I filled out my All-American and All-District ballots for the United States Basketball Writers Association, and I can't remember a year when the team I covered made the balloting so difficult.
The USBWA needs asks for three teams:
1. A 10-man first-team All-America
2. A five man Freshman All-America
3. A 10-man All-District (these are by state; UK's district includes Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi)
Plus coach of the year and player of the year.
Kentucky had a flat-out remarkable season, of course, but the nature of the team males All-Americsn voting difficult. There are so many deserving players nationally that it's hard to load up a team with Cats, even a 10-man team. And it's really hard even to determine where to draw the line -- which UK players deserve All-America? How do you decide which ones to leave off? If you put one UK player on the team, how do you leave off the second? If you put two, how do you decide the difference between the second- and third-most deserving?
So here's what I did:
1. I put Willie Cauley-Stein on the All-American team. Though I think Karl-Anthony Towns has been Kentucky's best player for the past month or so (and Devin Booker was for a stretch before that), I think Cauley-Stein, for what he brings at both ends of the court but especially defensively, is UK's most indispensable player. And it felt good to vote for a guy who's been around, who put in the time and turned himself into a leader. To me, he's the ideal All-American representative on this team.
2. I put Towns and Booker on my five-man freshman All-America. That team is almost impossible to vote for. There really are six guys I felt like HAD to be on the team: Towns, Booker, Jahlil Okafor, DeAngelo Russell, Stanley Johnson and Tyus Jones. But I wasn't limiting it to one UK guy, and Okafor and Russell are no-brainers. Ultimately I chose Johnson, whose game I love, over Jones, but that could have gone either way.
This left me with the all-district team. And here's where I figured I could use my ballot to salute the unselfishness and accomplishment at Kentucky this season. So I put a whopping seven Cats on that 10-man team: Cauley-Stein, Towns and Booker, plus Andrew and Aaron Harrison, Trey Lyles and Tyler Ulis. you can argue I could have put Marcus Lee and Dakari Johnson there, too, but seven felt like a good number.
I voted for Calipari for Coach of the Year, which probably should go without saying. I went back and forth on player Of the year before settling on Frank Kaminsky.
Anyway, there's that.
Posted from Rivals Mobile
The USBWA needs asks for three teams:
1. A 10-man first-team All-America
2. A five man Freshman All-America
3. A 10-man All-District (these are by state; UK's district includes Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi)
Plus coach of the year and player of the year.
Kentucky had a flat-out remarkable season, of course, but the nature of the team males All-Americsn voting difficult. There are so many deserving players nationally that it's hard to load up a team with Cats, even a 10-man team. And it's really hard even to determine where to draw the line -- which UK players deserve All-America? How do you decide which ones to leave off? If you put one UK player on the team, how do you leave off the second? If you put two, how do you decide the difference between the second- and third-most deserving?
So here's what I did:
1. I put Willie Cauley-Stein on the All-American team. Though I think Karl-Anthony Towns has been Kentucky's best player for the past month or so (and Devin Booker was for a stretch before that), I think Cauley-Stein, for what he brings at both ends of the court but especially defensively, is UK's most indispensable player. And it felt good to vote for a guy who's been around, who put in the time and turned himself into a leader. To me, he's the ideal All-American representative on this team.
2. I put Towns and Booker on my five-man freshman All-America. That team is almost impossible to vote for. There really are six guys I felt like HAD to be on the team: Towns, Booker, Jahlil Okafor, DeAngelo Russell, Stanley Johnson and Tyus Jones. But I wasn't limiting it to one UK guy, and Okafor and Russell are no-brainers. Ultimately I chose Johnson, whose game I love, over Jones, but that could have gone either way.
This left me with the all-district team. And here's where I figured I could use my ballot to salute the unselfishness and accomplishment at Kentucky this season. So I put a whopping seven Cats on that 10-man team: Cauley-Stein, Towns and Booker, plus Andrew and Aaron Harrison, Trey Lyles and Tyler Ulis. you can argue I could have put Marcus Lee and Dakari Johnson there, too, but seven felt like a good number.
I voted for Calipari for Coach of the Year, which probably should go without saying. I went back and forth on player Of the year before settling on Frank Kaminsky.
Anyway, there's that.
Posted from Rivals Mobile
