Somebody needs to find out what Big 12 Conference coaches and media-types were drinking last October when they turned in their preseason men’s basketball prognostications.
Whatever it was they were imbibing, you might want to drink some of the same elixir the next time you go to buy a PowerBall ticket or head to the casino.
Last fall, the coaches and media predicted Kansas University would win the 2003 conference championship.
Check. The Jayhawks won the title outright.
Last autumn, the coaches and media predicted the all-league first team would be Oklahoma’s Hollis Price, Texas Tech’s Andre Emmett, Texas’ T.J. Ford and Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich of Kansas.
Check. All but Emmett were unanimous picks.
Last October, the coaches and media predicted OU’s Price would be named player of the year.
Check. Price headed the ballot.
All that said, I have a couple of quibbles.
For starters, I wouldn’t have placed Emmett on my first team. Sure, the Red Raiders’ lanky forward led the league in scoring. Big deal. What else did he do? Play defense? Hardly. Texas Tech’s players voted — or so they said — not to suit Emmett in one game because he didn’t play defense. Make his team better? No way. Cause his coach to want to give back his salary? OK, he did that.
My choice for the fifth spot would have been Colorado’s Michel Morandais, a late-bloomer who elevated his game to the point he enabled the Buffaloes, despite an inability to win on the road, to become the league’s surprise team. Not only could Morandais score, he played defense and, even better, he showed he could play point guard as well as shooting guard. Morandais wasn’t KU’s Hinrich, but he was more like Hinrich than any other player in the league, unless you think OU’s Price also can play point guard, which I don’t.
Speaking of Price, he is a quintessential great college basketball player — a will o’ the wisp who is 50 percent heart, 40 percent talent and 10 percent guts. A myth developed around Price that when Oklahoma needed a clutch shot to win a game all the Sooners had to do was put the ball in his hands. And yet, when OU needed a basket to knock off Texas at home and earn a share of the Big 12 regular-season championship, Price missed a couple of nitty-gritty shots.
Still, taking nothing away from Price’s skills, I’ve always believed the most valuable player should be the best player on the league championship team. In five of the first six years of the Big 12, that’s been the case.
When Kansas won in 1997 and 1998, KU’s Raef LaFrentz was voted player of the year both times. When Iowa State won in 2000 and 2001, ISU’s Marcus Fizer and Jamaal Tinsley were players of the year respectively. When Kansas went 16-0 last year, Drew Gooden was the selection. The anomaly occurred in 1999 when Texas won the title and Nebraska’s Venson Hamilton was tapped the league’s best player.
Now it has happened again.
In fact, this marks the first time Kansas has won a conference championship and a Jayhawk has failed to be named player of the year.
In the media poll conducted by the Associated Press, Collison fell three votes shy of Price. Meanwhile, Ford was the only other player to receive votes. How Collison could receive eight votes and teammate Hinrich none is beyond me.
As far as I’m concerned, Hinrich was the heart and Collison the soul of this year’s team, and to ignore their common contribution to the championship run is short-sighted. They were like jet engines on an airplane. A jet may be able to fly on one engine, but never at peak performance.
If I were voting, I would have submitted Collison and Hinrich as an entry, but I guess the vote for player of the year is like the ballot in a presidential election. You couldn’t cast a ballot for both George Bush and Al Gore — not that either one of them had as good a year as Hinrich and Collison.
In my mind — and you can call me provincial if you want — the Big 12 Conference should have had co-players of the year in Collison and Hinrich.
