Kentucky Sports Radio

Player of the Year or NCAA Championship?

by Christopher Johns @ 8:00 pm. Filed under Blue Blooded Opinions

Can’t we just split the Player of the Year two ways?

As tournament time approaches, legit candidates for Player of the Year begin to emerge. As a UK fan, we all know and appreciate the fact that it is more fun to have a season where one of the players wearing Big Blue is in serious contention. While it is fun to get the publicity, and we certainly want our man John Wall to win, what is the correlation between Player of the Year and winning an NCAA Championship?

I ran back over the past 10 years with three of the big POY Awards. Check it:

Year	Wooden	Naismith	AP	Champ
2009	Blake Griffin, Oklahoma	Blake Griffin	Blake Griffin	North Carolina
2008	Tyler Hansbrough, North Carolina	Tyler Hansbrough	Tyler Hansbrough	Kansas
2007	Kevin Durant, Texas	Kevin Durant	Kevin Durant	Florida
2006	J. J. Redick, Duke	J. J. Redick	J. J. Redick	Florida
2005	Andrew Bogut, Utah	Andrew Bogut	Andrew Bogut	North Carolina
2004	Jameer Nelson, Saint Joseph’s	Jameer Nelson	Jameer Nelson	Connecticut
2003	T. J. Ford, Texas	T. J. Ford	David West, Xavier	Syracuse
2002	Jay Williams, Duke	Jason Williams	Jason Williams	Maryland
2001	Shane Battier, Duke	Shane Battier	Shane Battier	Duke
2000	Kenyon Martin, Cincinnati	Kenyon Martin	Kenyon Martin	Michigan State
1999	Elton Brand, Duke	Elton Brand	Elton Brand	Connecticut

First, the level of group-think here is a bit much. I would have added more columns, but all the POY awards are pretty much the same. With the exception of David West/TJ Ford in 2003, every POY award seems to go to one particular player.

Second, Duke was the last team to have a POY winner and win the National Championship, and they did that way back in 2001 when Coach K could still recruit.

So take heart, Kentucky fans. If Evan Turner winds up with the award, that almost assures Ohio State won’t win the championship and increases UK’s chances of coming home with the big prize. Of course, if John Wall ends up with the hardware, forget this post ever happened.

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