Men's College Basketball 2022-23 All-American Projections – Bleacher Report

Selection Sunday for the 2023 men’s NCAA tournament is less than a month away, which means we’re also not even a month away from finding out the All-American teams for the 2022-23 campaign.
That bit of news—at least from the Associated Press—typically drops on the Tuesday after Selection Sunday, meaning it includes everything that happens during the regular season and conference tournaments, but not the NCAA/NIT.
But why wait until mid-March for what you can have in mid-February instead?
Things will surely change a bit over the next four weeks, but you can probably Sharpie in Zach Edey, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Brandon Miller and Jalen Wilson as first-team All-Americans, while the likes of Jaime Jaquez Jr., Marcus Sasser, Drew Timme, Oscar Tshiebwe and Azuolas Tubelis are sure to be no worse than third-teamers on March 14.
Team success plays a factor in All-American voting, but you don’t need to play for a title contender (or even a team with a winning record) to receive consideration for this honor.

Armando Bacot, North Carolina
17.4 PPG, 11.0 RPG, 1.6 APG, 1.1 BPG
The Tar Heels have been a massive disappointment after opening the season at No. 1 in the AP poll, but at least their big man has been a constant source of domination in the paint. Bacot has tallied 16 double-doubles, and North Carolina is 8-1 when he reaches at least a baker’s dozen on the glass.
Antoine Davis, Detroit Mercy
27.7 PPG, 3.5 APG, 3.1 RPG, 1.0 SPG, 41.9 3P%
In the increasingly feasible quest to catch Pete Maravich atop the all-time scoring leaderboard—Davis needs 185 points to tie the Pistol and will get at least five more games in his college career—he has completely run away with the national scoring title. Davis is sitting at 32.3 points per game over his last 10 games, eclipsing 40 on four occasions.
Kendric Davis, Memphis
21.8 PPG, 6.0 APG, 3.8 RPG, 2.2 SPG, 31.9 3P%
Memphis is smack dab on the NCAA tournament bubble, but it’s hard to imagine the Tigers would even be a .500 team if Davis hadn’t transferred in from SMU this past offseason. He is leading the AAC in both points and assists per game, and he is tied for first in the conference in total steals. He went for 30 points, five assists and four steals earlier this season in a close loss to Alabama, and similar play in the (at least) two remaining games against Houston could get Davis into the mix for first-team All-American.
Tyler Kolek, Marquette
11.6 PPG, 7.7 APG, 4.0 RPG, 1.7 SPG, 37.5 3P%
Speaking of guys with lots of assists and steals, Marquette’s pass-first point guard has been putting on quite the show in Big East play. Kolek’s full-season numbers are great, and he had 11 dimes against each of Purdue and Baylor in November. But he’s averaging 15.1 points, 8.0 assists and 1.7 steals per game dating back to New Year’s Day.
Jalen Pickett, Penn State
17.2 PPG, 7.6 RPG, 6.9 APG
If Antoine Davis can make third-team All-American from a sub-.500 team, Pickett absolutely deserves some love, too, even with Penn State crashing and burning over the past six weeks. Barring an individual collapse down the stretch, Pickett will join Denzel Valentine and Jason Kidd as the only players in the past three decades to average at least 16.0 points, 6.5 assists and 6.5 rebounds in a season.

Jaime Jaquez Jr., UCLA
16.3 PPG, 8.0 RPG, 2.5 APG, 1.6 SPG, 34.4 3P%
Jaquez is one of those fine-wine seniors who just keeps getting better with age. He has drastically improved on defense and is leading the Bruins in both points and rebounds while ranking second on the team in assists, steals and blocks. Jaquez is averaging career-best marks in all five categories for a UCLA team still vying for a No. 1 seed.
Markquis Nowell, Kansas State
16.9 PPG, 7.6 APG, 3.4 RPG, 2.3 SPG, 35.2 3P%
Inefficiency has been an issue for Nowell over the past month, and his combination of poor shooting and turnover woes has taken a toll on a Kansas State team that has lost five of its last nine games. But if he eventually gets back to playing like he did during that 15-1 start to the season—when he averaged 17.2 points, 8.8 assists and a modest 2.8 turnovers per game—the Wildcats will reemerge as a legitimate threat to win it all.
Marcus Sasser, Houston
16.4 PPG, 3.2 APG, 2.7 RPG, 1.7 SPG, 36.9 3P%
Sasser’s per-game numbers don’t jump off the page, but that’s because Houston is a slow-paced, defense-first team. Sasser is easily top-10 in the nation in both win shares per 40 minutes and box plus/minus, per Sports Reference, as he makes a major impact on both ends of the floor.
Drew Timme, Gonzaga
21.1 PPG, 7.4 RPG, 3.5 APG, 1.0 BPG
See: Jaime Jaquez Jr. Gonzaga’s fourth-year big man is putting up career-best averages in all five categories, and is leading Gonzaga in total points, rebounds, assists and blocks. Should a center who is shooting 2-of-20 from three-point range on the season be leading the team in assists? Heck no. But it goes to show how indispensable Timme has been for the Zags.
Oscar Tshiebwe, Kentucky
15.7 PPG, 13.3 RPG, 1.6 APG, 1.6 SPG, 1.0 BPG
Tshiebwe is nowhere near the consistent double-double machine that he was last season, as opponents have figured out how to limit his scoring by throwing double-teams at him when he gets the ball down low and/or relentlessly driving at him until he gets into foul trouble. And yet, “Big O” is neck-and-neck with Zach Edey for the national lead in rebounds and is scoring better than 15 points per game. More than anything, it’s Kentucky’s status as a bubble team that will likely keep Tshiebwe from receiving first-team honors.

Season Stats: 22.2 PPG, 13.0 RPG, 2.3 BPG, 1.5 APG
If you’re wondering why we’ve pivoted from National Player of the Year rankings to projected All-American teams, say hello to Zach Edey, who ran away with that NPOY “race” long ago.
Even in recent losses, Edey has continued to have a bigger impact than any other player in the country. He had 33 points and 18 rebounds against Indiana, and finished with 24 points and eight rebounds in an extremely physical, constantly doubled-in-the-post game against Northwestern.
The 7’4″ Boilermaker is up to 20 double-doubles—well on the way to either matching or exceeding the 28 that Oscar Tshiebwe had en route to winning NPOY last year.
But Edey is so much more of an offensive presence than Big O ever was. He takes more shots per game and makes more buckets per shot, and his massive frame can and does absorb more contact than the vast majority of big men in recent history.
And because he’s so massive, he’s the best offensive rebounder in the nation (for the second straight year) and a considerably above-average shot-blocker—though he doesn’t hunt rejections, since avoiding foul trouble is way more important to Purdue’s cause.
Do the Boilermakers have enough talent around Edey to make the Final Four for the first time since 1980? Maybe. The turnover-filled meltdown over the final three minutes of the loss to Northwestern was quite troubling, and this is a slightly below-average three-point shooting team, even with opposing defenses constantly needing to worry about doubling Edey in the post.
But if you had to bet on one player putting the team on his back during a dominant four- to six-game run, Edey is the clear choice.

Season Stats: 20.2 PPG, 11.3 RPG, 3.5 APG, 3.0 BPG
For all the talk of Zach Edey for National Player of the Year, Trayce Jackson-Davis isn’t exactly rolling over and playing dead in that race.
Since missing a pair of late-December games against Elon and Kennesaw State for “precautionary reasons”—he was previously dealing with a back issue—TJD has averaged 23.3 points, 13.9 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 3.3 blocks, either recording at least 25 points, a double-double or both in each of those 12 games.
It has been a preposterously impressive run, and Indiana winning eight of the last nine games to climb from the bubble back into the mix for perhaps a No. 4 seed has just about cemented Jackson-Davis as a first-team All-American.
Perhaps most impressive is that Jackson-Davis basically never comes out of the game. He’ll have the occasional 33-minute outing when he gets a bit of rest late in a game with a final margin of at least 15 points, but he has logged at least 38 minutes in eight of his last 12 games, none of which went to overtime.
That includes playing all 40 minutes in the one-point loss to Northwestern (18 points, 24 rebounds, eight assists, four blocks) and all 40 minutes of Saturday’s one-point win at Michigan (28 points, 11 rebounds, three assists, two blocks).
It’s just a shame he couldn’t do anything to slow Edey in their first head-to-head matchup. TJD racked up 25 points, seven rebounds and five blocks in that victory, but he was unable to gain any ground on the 7’4″ Boilermaker, who went for 33, 18 and three of his own.
Maybe he can close the gap in Round No. 2 on Feb. 25.

Season Stats: 18.8 PPG, 8.2 RPG, 2.0 APG, 42.7 3P%
Brandon Miller is having a sensational campaign as the leader of what is—barring an end of season meltdown—the best team season in the history of Alabama men’s basketball.
The comparisons to Kevin Durant are a bit aggressive, but what do you expect when a 6’9″ freshman averages around 19 points and eight rebounds per game while showcasing one of the sweetest three-point strokes in the nation?
He only has five double-doubles, but Miller has scored in double figures in all but one game—against Houston, which might be the best defense in the nation.
It wasn’t enough to get the W in a 100-90 affair, but Miller scored a career-high 36 points against Gonzaga. He had back-to-back 30-point performances in mid-January against LSU and Vanderbilt. He went for 24 and nine against each of Michigan State and Florida, and put up 24 and eight with five assists and two blocks in a tight win over Memphis.
And despite shouldering a heavy load from Day One, Miller has shown no signs of slowing down. He did have an off day from distance against Auburn over the weekend, shooting 0-of-7 to bring his clip down to 42.7 percent, but he made all five of his shots inside the arc and still managed to average better than one point per field-goal attempt, per usual.
The NBA mock draft community has expressed some concerns about Miller’s ceiling/athleticism, but he has thrown down some incredible dunks in recent games to silence that nonsense.

Season Stats: 20.2 PPG, 9.3 RPG, 2.1 APG, 1.2 SPG, 39.1 3P%
This one might ring a bit hollow in the aftermath of Saturday night’s loss to Stanford, in which Azuolas Tubelis was neutralized by foul trouble and inexplicably held to four points and no rebounds.
But, hey, everyone gets one dud, right? And that was the first time all season Tubelis was held below a dozen points or half a dozen rebounds, as he has been the driving force of what was a strong candidate for a No. 1 seed before it got tripped up by the Cardinal.
Tubelis has recorded 11 double-doubles, though his most impressive performance wasn’t one of those games. It was on Groundhog Day, when Oregon experienced something out of Phil Connors’ worst nightmares, watching Tubelis score over and over and over again, finishing with 40 points, nine boards, three assists and three steals.
The foul-trouble issue against Stanford wasn’t a new phenomenon for Tubelis. In fact, it was his 10th game this season with at least four fouls, which is worth considering when it comes time to decide how far to take the Wildcats in your bracket.
But if the refs aren’t slowing him down, no one is. Tubelis is a rim-running big man who can turn a defensive rebound into a layup in about five seconds. This 6’11” power forward also has just enough three-point range to keep the defense honest, which helps open up the floor for the rest of the Wildcats to operate.

Season Stats: 21.4 PPG, 8.4 RPG, 2.6 APG, 36.5 3P%
Like Azuolas Tubelis, Jalen Wilson recently had an atypically unproductive performance.
After 23 consecutive outings in double figures, Wilson scored just two points with three turnovers and four fouls in a game against Texas that the Jayhawks somehow still managed to win—in what was a vivid reminder of how great Kansas can be when Dajuan Harris is playing well.
Prior to that off night, though, Wilson was averaging 26.5 points over his last six games. And he bounced back nicely from that dud with a stat-sheet-stuffing 18 points, five rebounds, five assists and five steals in a blowout win at Oklahoma.
What’s most impressive about Wilson’s season is that he has been (minus that Texas game) so consistently great while slogging through the toughest schedule in the country as part of one of the shortest rotations in the country. And he has done so while experiencing a drastic increase—by more than 50 percent—in usage rating from where he had been at the previous two seasons.
Like, if anyone had an excuse for running on fumes at this point in the season, it would be Wilson. But he just keeps on trucking while trying to make Kansas the first back-to-back national champions since the mid-2000s Florida Gators.
Statistics current through the start of play Tuesday.

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