Reacting to the 2017-2018 Atlantic 10 MBB Awards
Who in the world was involved in picking the recipients for the awards that were given to Atlantic 10 men's basketball players for the 2017-2018 season? Somehow Peyton Aldridge was selected as the Atlantic 10 Co-Player of the Year, along with Jaylen Adams. Adams is a worthy selection and I am not here to debate that. With that said, there are several reasons why Jared Terrell should have been selected over Aldridge.
Terrell contributed way more to his team on the defensive side of the ball while the Davidson senior always looked like he was out to lunch on defense. In addition, a fair comparison is to look at how each senior performed in their road games at Nevada, a projected NCAA tournament team. In his trip to Nevada, Jared Terrell put up 24 points (50 FG% and 83.3 FT%), three rebounds, and one assist in 28 minutes. On the other hand, eight days later, Peyton Aldridge scraped together 13 points (36.4 FG% and 3-3 FT), five rebounds, and two assists in 39 minutes. It is self-explanatory who performed better between the two players and URI lost by seven (after E.C. Matthews broke his left wrist), while Davidson lost by 13. Luckily, they remembered to put Jared Terrell on the all-conference first team that they also messed up. If team success is worth nothing to these individual awards, then B.J. Johnson is way more deserving than Matt Mobley to be on the first team. Johnson was better in every way possible.
Next, how did Yuta Watanabe win the Defensive Player of the Year award over Stanford Robinson? I don't care how anyone wants to use statistics to their advantage in an argument, there is much to be said for the impact that is felt on the basketball court and does not show up in the box score. Stanford Robinson is one of the biggest pests when it comes to defending his matchup. His disruptive play opens up the opportunity for his teammates to rack up steals and blocks of their own. If someone wants to look at numbers, Robinson averaged two steals per game in conference play, which is good for the third best average in the conference. Meanwhile, Watanabe averaged a mere 0.8 steals per conference game. Essentially, it was guaranteed that Rhode Island's #13 would get you two extra possessions a game off of steals and GW's #12 might get you one. Moving on, Watanabe averaged 1.3 blocks per conference game and Robinson averaged 0.5 blocks per game. Considering that Robinson is 6'4" and Watanabe is 6'9", that not only makes sense but if anything, that's embarrassing for the Japanese native.
Furthermore, Jeff Dowtin had a fair argument to be Co-Most Improved Player of the Year alongside Luwane Pipkins. Rhode Island's starting point guard increased his shooting percentage from the field by 0.9%, his shooting percentage from deep by 1.1%, and his shooting percentage from the free throw line by 16%! Given all of those improvements, he averages 3.7 more points per game this season. Additionally, he averages 1.5 more rebounds per game, 3.3 more assists per game, 0.6 more steals per game, and 0.3 more blocks per game. To top it all off, Dowtin averages A/TO ratio has increased by 1.8 from last season to this season and he has one of the best assist to turnover ratios in the nation (third best in the country).
Moreover, as much as it may hurt a Rhody MBB fan to read, E.C. Matthews does not deserve to be an all-conference third team selection. You know who does? There is plenty of reasons to say that Stanford Robinson and Jeff Dowtin deserve selections to the third (if not higher) all-conference team over the Rams' #0. While talking about the all-conference third team, James Demery was not a worthier selection than Robinson or Dowtin either. However, I am not saying to stick as many Rhody MBB players on these all-conference teams as possible but I do want fairness. Nick Sherod deserved to be on the all-conference third team more than Demery. Sherod averaged just 0.3 less points per game than Demery and he shot 2.7% better from the field, 8.5% better from deep, and 14% better from the free throw line during A-10 play.
My one consistent gripe with all of the mistakes that were made when it came to giving out individual awards is that no team besides Saint Bonaventure (barely) and Rhode Island did anything productive in non-conference play. If two candidates for an award are close due to their work in conference play then a huge deciding factor should be which player played better in non-conference play. To clarify, when I say that the accolades should go to the player that had better non-conference performances, I am referring to quality performances against quality non-conference competition. Anyone that looks close enough can see that most of the outstanding non-conference performances by Atlantic 10 MBB players (aside from Saint Bonaventure and URI players) were against teams that are lucky to be considered Division 1 men's college basketball teams. For instance, the supposed Co-Player of the Year from Davidsion had his best performance in non-conference play vs. an awful UNC-Wilmington team. There are countless college basketball players that could score the same 37 points that Peyton Aldridge had if they played at home vs. UNC-Wilmington and shot 24 shots from the field and 10 free throws in total. There is only one player in the conference that scored 32 points vs. Seton Hall in the Barclays Center and hit the game-winning shot at the buzzer - a deserving Atlantic 10 Player of the Year, Jared Terrell.
One of the decisions that the group of people made correctly was picking Dan Hurley to be the Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year. Then again, anyone in the world could have made that choice. Picking Dan Hurley to be this season's coach of the year in this weak conference is as easy as tying your shoes.
The bottom line is whoever picked out the players for the majority of the 2017-2018 Atlantic 10 MBB awards needs to reevaluate themselves.
