Who's the top women's player of the year candidate in every conference?
Graham Hays ESPN.com Feb 27,2020
Sure, Sabrina Ionescu makes national awards more and more of a foregone conclusion with each triple-double she adds to the record book. But 32 players will soon earn conference player of the year honors, recognized as the most influential players in their own basketball kingdoms.
So as conference tournaments open as early as Sunday -- and the women's NCAA tournament tips off March 20 -- we handicap the player of the year races in all 32 Division I conferences.
SEC
Front-runner: Rhyne Howard, Kentucky
Howard has scored 28% of her team's total points in SEC games -- and she missed three games with an injury. She is the most indispensable player in the country. She fuels Kentucky's transition (2.6 steals per game), leads the team in 3-pointers and is much improved around the basket.
Top competition: Tyasha Harris, South Carolina
Baylor's Lauren Cox might be the only comparable player when it comes to making an impact without scoring a lot of points. Harris' distribution (5.7 APG) sets up South Carolina's youth.
link to complete article
https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/28780568/top-women-player-year-candidate-every-conference
Graham Hays ESPN.com Feb 27,2020
Sure, Sabrina Ionescu makes national awards more and more of a foregone conclusion with each triple-double she adds to the record book. But 32 players will soon earn conference player of the year honors, recognized as the most influential players in their own basketball kingdoms.
So as conference tournaments open as early as Sunday -- and the women's NCAA tournament tips off March 20 -- we handicap the player of the year races in all 32 Division I conferences.
- Here's the criteria we emphasized:
- Season-long performance matters for context, but these real-life awards are designed to reward performance in conference games. These picks therefore emphasize the same thing, and all statistics referenced are conference-only stats, unless otherwise noted.
- The debate about most outstanding versus most valuable never ends when it comes to sports awards. But the reality is that a player from a team that isn't at least competitive in its conference has to do something truly spectacular to win. For the most part, the top half of any conference produces the award winners.
- And yes, most conferences have more than two worthy candidates. But lest this run to the length of a Russian novel, we capped each conference at two players.
- And while there are a few cases in which one team arguably had the conference's top two or three candidates (we're looking at you, UConn), we operated under the assumption that the best candidate from that team eliminates her teammates.
SECFront-runner: Rhyne Howard, Kentucky
Howard has scored 28% of her team's total points in SEC games -- and she missed three games with an injury. She is the most indispensable player in the country. She fuels Kentucky's transition (2.6 steals per game), leads the team in 3-pointers and is much improved around the basket.
Top competition: Tyasha Harris, South Carolina
Baylor's Lauren Cox might be the only comparable player when it comes to making an impact without scoring a lot of points. Harris' distribution (5.7 APG) sets up South Carolina's youth.
link to complete article
https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/28780568/top-women-player-year-candidate-every-conference
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