If you’ve followed the progress
that the University of North Carolina basketball team has made over the course
of the season, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you as to whom the
Scout.com Coach and Freshman of the Year honorees are.
After dropping three (two of those
at home) of four games in a 12-day stretch of January, Roy Williams’ Tar Heels have won 10 of
their past 11 games and will go into the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament
this week as one of the nation’s hottest teams.
And, after they lost their top
seven players from their 2005 national championship roster, including four NBA
Draft lottery selections, who would have imagined that the Tar Heels could be in
position to make a strong push for a return to the Final Four a year
later?
Since relocating to Lawrence,
Kansas, in the spring of 1988 as a first-time
head coach at Kansas and then
returning to Chapel Hill to coach his alma mater two
springs ago, Williams has turned in many marvelous performances.
None of those, however, were as
impressive as what he has done this season with a squad of five freshmen and a
handful of little-used veterans, none of whom had averaged more than 3.9 points
per game before this season.
That’s why he’s the Scout.com
2005-07 Coach of the Year, beating out a particularly large number of
near-equally impressive efforts by some of his peers.
And the Tar Heels wouldn’t be
sitting with a 21-6 record and be in position for a likely No. 2 seed into the
NCAA Tournament today if not for the production of post player Tyler Hansbrough.
He was an easy selection as the
Scout.com Freshman of the Year. In fact, the center from Poplar, Bluff, was
chosen to the fourth team of the Scout.com All-America team last
Friday.
A closer look at some of the
coaches and freshmen considered for Scout.com honors:
Scout.com Coach of the
Year
Roy Williams (North
Carolina)
Has ever a program lost so much and
yet been so good in the following season? In November, a trip to the NCAA
Tournament from within the tough Atlantic Coast Conference would have been
considered “over achieving” by many. Now the Tar Heels are something beyond
“dark horse” candidates to be playing on the final weekend of the
season.
Runners-up
Ben Howland
(UCLA)
It took Howland just three years to
turn a program that won just 10 games in Steve Lavin’s final season into the
Pacific 10 Conference champion. And the Bruins have won 24 games despite being
without one of their three best players (sophomore forward Josh Shipp, with a hip injury) for all
but four games this season.
Thad Matta
(Ohio State)
A Big Ten Conference championship
was expected out of the Buckeyes. But it was supposed to come a year from now,
when freshman Greg Oden is expected
to be the dominant inside presence nationally. Ninety-nine, point-nine percent –
or more – of the very few who thought it was do-able this season may reside in
Columbus.
Bruce Pearl (Tennessee)
He was the favorite until
North Carolina continued to
improve at a rapid-fire pace over the past month. After
Pearl was lured away from
Wisconsin-Milwaukee last spring, he was expected to turn the Volunteers into
NCAA Tournament participants but not quite as quickly as
Pearl pulled it off.
Bill Self (Kansas)
Despite a player rotation made up
almost entirely of freshmen and sophomores, Self was able to coax a very
surprising Big 12 Conference co-championship performance out of the
Jayhawks.
Bruce Weber (Illinois)
After losing two NBA Draft
first-round selections (Deron Williams and Luther Head) from
their backcourt, as well as their best forward (Roger Powell), this was supposed to
border on a “rebuilding” season for the Illini. But Bruce Weber’s handiwork, orchestrated
by senior guard Dee Brown, was
enough to bring this team back to a Top 10 ranking and just one game short of a
Big Ten Conference championship.
Jay Wright
(Villanova)
The Wildcats are playing without
the guy (forward Curtis Sumpter,
sidelined with an ACL injury) expected to be their best player and there are
probably only 275 NCAA Division I teams with taller starting lineups. But the
Wildcats shared the Big East Conference’s regular-season championship with
Connecticut and are strong
contenders for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Take a bow, Coach
Wright.
Honorable mention: John Brady (LSU), John Calipari (Memphis), Tom Crean (Marquette), Mark Fox (Nevada), Karl Hobbs (George Washington), Darrin Horn (Western Kentucky), Chris Lowery (Southern Illinois), Lorenzo Romar (Washington), David Rose (BYU) and Bob Thomason
(Pacific)
Freshman of the
Year
Tyler Hansbrough (6-8,
North
Carolina)
Well before Saturday night, he was
the obvious choice as the top freshman in the country. After his performance (27
points, 10 rebounds and two blocked shots) during the 83-76 victory in a
regular-season finale at Duke, “obvious” became “the no-brainer”
choice.
Stats: 19.0 points, 7.6 rebounds, 1.2
assists, 1.5 steals per game (.582 FG%)
Freshmen
All-America
First
Team
Dominic James (5-11,
Marquette)
He was easily the most influential
newcomer in the Big East Conference and the co-prime reason (with senior forward
Steve Novak) the Golden Eagles will
be in the NCAA Tournament field.
Stats: 15.3 points, 4.6 rebounds, 5.3
assists, 1.6 steals per game (.440)
Brandon Rush (6-5,
Kansas)
His decision to withdraw from the
NBA Draft pool proved a “win-win” situation – for both he and Bill Self’s Jayhawks.
Stats: 14.1 points, 6.0 rebounds, 2.2
assists, 1.0 steals per game (.495 FG%, .511 on 3’s)
Rodney Stuckey (6-3, Eastern Washington)
The best freshman most college
basketball fans had never heard of until recently. He may already be the most
gifted guard in the West.
Stats: 24.1 points, 4.8 rebounds, 4.1
assists, 2.3 steals per game (.493 FG%, .376 on 3’s)
Tyrus Thomas (6-8,
LSU)
He is the most talented player on
the most talented team in the Southeastern Conference.
Stats: 12.7 points, 9.3 rebounds, 1.4
assists, 1.3 steals, 3.0 blocks per game (.598 FG%)
Shawne Williams (6-9,
Memphis)
He may be the most versatile
freshman in this class.
Stats: 13.0 points, 6.3 rebounds, 2.0
assists, 1.4 steals, 1.4 blocked shots per game (.410 FG%)
Second
Team
Mario Chalmers (6-2,
Kansas)
After a slow start, the
Anchorage native has evolved into
one of the Big 12’s best guards.
Stats: 10.9 points, 2.0 rebounds, 3.8
assists, 2.8 steals per game (.433 FG%, .358 on 3’s)
Richard Hendrix (6-8,
Alabama)
After senior forward Chuck Davis was sideline with an ACL
injury, he more than picked up the slack (he averaged 11.3 points and 10.1
rebounds over the final 13 games).
Stats: 9.6 points, 8.0 rebounds, 1.6
blocked shots per game (.554 FG%)
Trent Plaisted (6-11,
BYU)
He proved to be among the Mountain
West Conference’s best players – regardless of class
level.
Stats: 13.4 points, 6.7 rebounds, 1.0
assists per game (.516 FG%)
Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (6-7,
UCLA)
The native of
Cameroon earned
top frosh honors in the Pac 10 for the conference
champions.
Stats: 8.8 points, 8.4 rebounds, 1.2
assists, 1.1 steals per game (.529 FG%)
Marcus Williams (6-7,
Arizona)
He was among the most productive
freshmen Lute Olson has
coached.
Stats: 12.4 points, 4.4 rebounds, 1.9
assists per game (.479 FG%, .444 on 3’s)
Inducted into the USBWA Hall of
Fame last April, Frank Burlison is Scout.com’s national basketball expert and is
also a columnist for the Long Beach (Calif.) Press-Telegram. He can be reached at
frank.burlison@presstelegram.com. Read more of Burlison’s pieces at
www.collegehoops.scout.com