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Bleacher Report's 2022-23 Men's College Basketball Awards – Bleacher Report
The 2022-23 men’s college basketball regular season has come to a close, but before we can fully shift gears to filling out brackets, it’s time to hand out some national awards.
Unofficially, this portion of the calendar year shall be dubbed “Zach Edey SZN.”
There should be a prop bet somewhere on whether the number of National Player of the Year trophies awarded to Purdue’s big man will exceed the number of NCAA tournament games the Boilermakers win, because Edey is going to take home a whole lot of hardware.
Most of the other awards we’re handing out are nowhere near as cut-and-dried, though, with multiple excellent candidates from which to choose.
In particular, Head Coach of the Year seems to change on a daily basis.
Bleacher Report’s national writers, Kerry Miller and David Kenyon, selected the winners of this season’s awards.
Let’s start out our awards ceremony with what should be the one with the most unanimous agreement.
Zach Edey has been the clear-cut NPOY since late November, and at no point has there been any sort of disastrous performance to cause anyone to question whether that should be reconsidered.
Yes, Purdue has struggled as of late, but not Edey. And despite those struggles, Purdue is still in the mix for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
Between the two losses to Indiana, Edey racked up 59 points and 34 rebounds while limiting one of his only viable challengers for NPOY (Trayce Jackson-Davis) to a combined 35 points and 15 rebounds.
No opponent has been able to hold Edey to 10 points or fewer, and he has accumulated 22 double-doubles.
The Boilermakers will need to make a deep run in the Big Ten and/or NCAA tournaments in order for him to surpass the 28 double-doubles that Oscar Tshiebwe had in 2021-22. But between last year’s NPOY and the man who is going to be this year’s NPOY, there’s no question Edey is the more dominant offensive weapon.
Speaking of previous players of the year, KenPom.com has a POY rating system where the gap between No. 1 and No. 2 is often quite narrow. Two years ago, Drew Timme (1.915) barely edged out Luka Garza (1.903). It was even closer the previous year with Garza finishing 0.004 rating points ahead of Devon Dotson. And in 2018, Trae Young (1.480) and Jalen Brunson (1.479) basically finished in a tie.
Edey is presently at 2.154, with Jaime Jaquez Jr. in second place at 1.588. Just a laughable divide, but indicative of the landslide victory the big man is going to have.
We can’t ignore the elephant in the room: Brandon Miller reportedly brought the gun to Darius Miles and Michael Davis that was used in the fatal shooting of Jamea Jonae Harris, and he subsequently did the “TSA pat-down” during the pregame intros after that information became public knowledge.
We can appreciate that the optics of handing him the title of Freshman of the Year are…not great.
But we’re here to judge his basketball prowess. And there’s really no debate that Miller has been the most impactful freshman on the court this season.
Miller will enter the SEC tournament averaging 19.6 points and 8.0 rebounds per game, which is rarefied air. The only other freshmen in the past three decades to average at least 19.5 points and 7.5 rebounds per game while shooting at least 40 percent from three-point range were Kevin Durant and Bol Bol—and Bol only played nine games.
People were shocked a few weeks ago when ESPN’s Seth Greenberg started comparing Miller to Durant, but it does kind of make sense through that lens.
Miller has scored in double figures in all but one game—at Houston, which has arguably the best defense in the nation—and has put up at least 30 on four occasions. His magnum opus was the 41-point performance at South Carolina, in which he outscored all of his teammates combined in simply willing the Crimson Tide to an overtime victory.
And, frankly, there haven’t been many challengers for this title. Duke’s Kyle Filipowski and Kansas’ Gradey Dick would probably be Nos. 2 and 3 in one order or the other if it’s a three-spot ballot for Freshman of the Year, but neither is anywhere near as efficient or consistent as Miller has been.
Choosing a Coach of the Year is always controversial, because there’s no defined criteria.
Should it go to the coach of the team that has overachieved to the greatest degree? If that’s the case, split the trophy into fourths and mail a piece to each of Marquette’s Shaka Smart, Kansas State’s Jerome Tang, Pittsburgh’s Jeff Capel and Southern Miss’ Jay Ladner.
If it should simply go to the coach of the best team, congratulations to Houston’s Kelvin Sampson for having the Cougars at No. 1 in all of the predictive metrics for most of the season.
But we’re going with Kansas’ Bill Self for a variety of reasons.
Foremost on the list is the fact that Self lost six of the eight leading scorers from last year’s roster yet has put together what might be an even better team, fully capable of repeating as national champion. And while he did add highly touted freshman Gradey Dick and transfer Kevin McCullar Jr., most of their success is owed to the development of returnees Jalen Wilson, KJ Adams Jr. and Dajuan Harris Jr.
Second is the fact that Kansas has thrived against the most difficult schedule in the nation. Per usual, I might add. According to KenPom, Kansas had the toughest schedule both last season and in 2018-19, and had the nation’s second-toughest schedule in 2017-18 and 2019-20. But 15 Quad 1 wins (and counting) is absurd.
And then there’s the actual in-game/in-season coaching. The second-half comeback against Baylor was the most vivid example, but also bouncing back from a 23-point home loss to TCU to later defeat the Horned Frogs in Fort Worth was quite the turnaround.
All great stuff from the coach who outright won possibly the most loaded conference ever.
There were so many transfers this past offseason that one could easily put together an All-American team just of transfers.
Heck, just in the Big East, you’ve got Souley Boum at Xavier, Bryce Hopkins at Providence, Baylor Scheierman at Creighton and Tristen Newton at Connecticut, all playing indispensable roles for Final Four candidates.
But Memphis’ Kendric Davis is the relatively clear choice for Transfer of the Year.
The former SMU star stayed in the AAC and sure had some fun against his prior team. Davis had 25 points, 11 assists and seven rebounds in the first game against the Mustangs before putting up 23 points, 10 assists and four steals on SMU’s senior night.
For the year, he’s averaging 21.3 points, 5.8 assists and 2.2 steals per game. And if he can remain north of 21.0, 5.5 and 2.0, respectively, he’ll be the first player to finish a season above each of those thresholds since Steph Curry’s final year at Davidson (2008-09).
(Fun Fact: Davis’ current coach, Penny Hardaway, is also in that club with 22.8 PPG, 6.4 APG and 2.4 SPG three decades ago.)
At 46.1 percent inside the arc and 31.4 percent beyond it, Davis has not been an efficient shooter. But he makes up for it at the free-throw line, where he makes 84.7 percent of his 7.7 attempts per game. That ability to both get to and convert from the charity stripe is a colossal X-factor to keep in mind when filling out your brackets next week. (Provided Memphis gets into said bracket, which it should.)
Western Kentucky’s Jamarion Sharp is leading the nation in blocks per game for a second consecutive season, which deserves a serious honorable mention. Houston’s Marcus Sasser, Kansas’ Kevin McCullar Jr. and Rutgers’ Caleb McConnell are also strong candidates who have been indispensable cogs for defenses that rank top 10 in adjusted efficiency.
But the biggest difference-maker on defense is arguably UCLA’s Jaylen Clark.
Clark is a professional menace, and his ball-hawking skills are off the chart, averaging 2.6 steals per game. Notably, he does it without taking many unnecessary gambles, which is such a key factor in UCLA having one of the best defenses. He also rarely gets into foul trouble, though he did get DQ’d twice in February.
More than 50 percent of UCLA’s opponents have been held to 60 points or fewer, and there have only been five instances of an opponent scoring at least 70.
It’s a teamwide effort, for sure, and the type of thing that was common during Mick Cronin’s decade-plus at Cincinnati. But there’s little question that Clark’s increase in playing time is why the Bruins are much better on that end of the floor than they were last year.
Per Sports Reference, Clark is leading the nation in both defensive box plus/minus (6.7) and defensive win shares (2.8).
Unfortunately, he suffered a lower-leg injury in the regular-season finale against Arizona. We don’t yet know the extent of that injury, but if he is unavailable for the dance, it’s a devastating blow that probably lowers UCLA’s March Madness ceiling. But it doesn’t change our pick for DPOY.
Early in the season, this award absolutely would’ve gone to Connecticut’s Donovan Clingan. But the big freshman hasn’t made anywhere near as much of an impact off the bench over the past 6-7 weeks.
Kentucky’s Antonio Reeves was also a fine candidate until injuries elsewhere on the roster forced him to make 11 starts. Not sure what the “official” maximum is for games started when talking sixth-man awards, but double digits seems like enough to remove Reeves from consideration.
Hard to argue with Sir’Jabari Rice, though, who is averaging better than 24 minutes and better than 12 points per game as a reserve at Texas.
Rice has not started a single game for the Longhorns, but he has been the KenPom game MVP eight times. And particularly since late January, he has been one heck of a reliever, if you will. Over the last 11 games, Rice has averaged 17.3 points.
In the key home win over Baylor, he scored 15 of the team’s final 28 points. He also had 15 points in the final 12 minutes of regulation (and hit another big triple in overtime) in the win over Oklahoma. And in keeping with the 15 theme, that’s how many he scored in the second half of the home game against Texas Tech, in which the Longhorns rallied from a 12-point deficit.
Marcus Carr, Tyrese Hunter and Dillon Mitchell have gotten most of the attention, but hard to imagine where Texas would be without Rice.
Not only has Tyler Kolek improved from last season, but he’s also a much better player now than he was in mid-January.
In 2021-22, Kolek averaged a respectable 6.7 points and 5.9 assists per game. However, opponents didn’t even need to worry about him calling his own number, as he shot 37.1 percent inside the arc, shot 28.1 percent beyond it and rarely got to the free-throw line. It took him 7.0 field-goal attempts per game to score those 6.7 points, which is a dreadful ratio. But at least he did a great job of setting up Justin Lewis, Darryl Morsell and Co. for their buckets.
This year, Kolek is an even better distributor (7.9 APG) and a verified problem when he creates his own shots, shooting 39.6 percent from the perimeter and 53.4 percent on deuces. His scoring average has nearly doubled to 12.7 points per game, and his O-rating has absolutely skyrocketed from 92.3 to 122.5
It took about two months for him to hit his stride, too. Kolek shot 45 percent from the field through his first 18 games, averaging 9.0 points and 7.2 field-goal attempts. Since then, he’s at 51.9 FG%, 17.9 PPG and 12.0 FGA—while still averaging nearly eight assists per game.
Out of seemingly nowhere, Kolek went from an offensive liability to senior-year Bobby Hurley (17.0 PPG, 8.2 APG). And Marquette has emerged as a very real threat to win a national championship because of it.
Slowly but surely, people have come to appreciate Jalen Pickett’s game.
However, Penn State’s stat-sheet-stuffing point guard inexplicably was not included in the midseason Wooden Watch top 25 in early January, and it still feels like he is being substantially underrated even as a possible third-team All-American.
Pickett is averaging 18.1 points, 7.3 rebounds and 7.0 assists per game, which would be “in the national headlines every damn day” stuff if he played for Duke or Kentucky instead of Penn State.
Averaging 18-7-7 in college is just absurd. Even 16-6-6 has been done just six times in the past three decades. Moreover, the only previous players to average at least 16.0 points, 6.5 rebounds and 6.0 assists per game were Penny Hardaway, Jason Kidd and Denzel Valentine—each of whom was a unanimous first-team All-American at the end of that campaign.
But there’s nothing flashy about Pickett. He plays below the rim. He doesn’t shoot a ton of threes. His M.O. is backing down the opposing point guard into the paint before kicking the ball out to an open teammate. And Penn State is smack dab on the NCAA tournament bubble, making it difficult to make any sort of NPOY case for him.
He’s doing everything in his power to get the Nittany Lions into the dance for the first time since 2011, though. In recent wins over Illinois and Minnesota, he had a combined 73 points and 16 assists. He also had 11 dimes in the critical OT win at Northwestern and had a fairly standard 16-7-7 line in the big Sunday win over Maryland.
It’s almost inevitable that he’s going to put the team on his back with a Herculean effort in the Big Ten tournament.
