Boy, I’m glad I’m just guessing at how the coaches will vote and not actually voting.
There are five Big East men’s basketball games left to be played in the 2024-25 regular season. The season will have come to a halt by bedtime on Saturday, and seeing as today’s Friday, we should probably make some postseason award picks, huh?
As always, my guiding light here is trying to go with how the coaches will vote for these awards, as they’re the ones making the official picks. With that said, if you put 11 brains to work on something, you’re bound to get weird answers sometimes, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens, huh?
Off we go, then……
Player of the Year: RJ Luis, St. John’s
He’s the leading scorer on the best team in the league, and the Red Storm’s offense falls apart without him on the floor. That’s their weak end of the court, so they need Luis’ scoring abilities — and his rebounding! — to keep things moving on the offensive end of the floor to make the defensive prowess pay off with wins. You can make an argument that he’s not STJ’s most impactful player, but I’m trying to make a prediction as to how the coaches are going to vote, and “top scorer on league champ” is a hard nut to crack unless there’s a blatantly obvious reason to vote for someone else on that roster.
Freshman of the Year: Liam McNeeley, Connecticut
I think this one could actually go to Georgetown’s Thomas Sorber.
They’re 1-2 in points, rebounds, and assists per game amongst freshmen in the Big East this season with Sorber having the edge in rebounds by a little more than two per game. McNeeley missed a few games in the middle of the season, but his regular season finale is going to pull him within one game of Sorber, who is done for the year. They both have seven Freshman of the Week honors from the Big East office.
It’s very much a flip a coin situation here, and I’m going with McNeeley because his team is going to the NCAA tournament with him as the leading scorer and Sorber’s is nowhere close.
Coach of the Year: Rick Pitino, St. John’s
St. John’s was picked to finish fifth in the league this season. They have already locked up the outright regular season title. The Red Storm are ranked in the top 10 of the AP poll for the first time since forever. The Johnnies have the best defense in the Big East and if you wanted to argue that they’re the best defense in the country, I wouldn’t stop you.
It’s Rick’s trophy, should be unanimous.
All-Big East Team
Steven Ashworth, Creighton
Eric Dixon, Villanova
Kam Jones, Marquette
RJ Luis, St. John’s
Liam McNeeley, Connecticut
Luis is obviously here because of his POY nod. Kam Jones is the KenPom.com POY in the league as I’m writing this on Thursday afternoon, and Paint Touches did a hell of job explaining why he should get the actual trophy. As such, he’s gotta be on this list. I thought that the conference is too deep to double up on any one team, so that means I gotta get a Bluejay and a Husky on here. I didn’t say out loud that McNeeley’s actually UConn’s leading scorer earlier, but he is, and that’s worth getting him in here. I went with Ashworth as my Creighton rep because I think his Big East high 6.9 assists per game is much more important to what the Jays are doing than Ryan Kalkbrenner leading the team in scoring and being Big.
Finally, we have to acknowledge that Eric Dixon is leading the country in scoring. He’s not a fun player to watch, but at some point, you can’t really argue with nearly 24 points a game and nearly 43% long range shooting. That’s gotta be worth something, even though it’s not going to be worth a trip to the NCAA tournament for the Wildcats.
Think I got something wrong? Think I missed something? Want to argue about Sixth Man or Defensive Player OTY? That’s what the comments section is for.
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