Conference Players of the Year

Sure, January marks the beginning of a new year but for hoops fans it mainly marks the start of ACC basketball. Though it's true that since the ACC started it's football-fueled expansion there have been a few conference games in December, the real schedule starts in January. Just this weekend there were two double-overtime games, and a nice road win for the Heels, so the ACC is off to a good start.

The conference is also loaded. Notre Dame looked terrific in taking down the Heels tonight. The addition of Louisville, coupled with Syracuse the year before, has helped reorient the conference back to where it belongs - as the nation's pre-eminent hoops conference. In addition to three teams in the top 5 and five in the current top 20, two other ACC squads have been ranked this year.  That's seven teams - at a minimum - that should get bids to the NCAA tournament.

Tournament bids is one way to measure the strength of a conference; ditto final fours and championships. Another interesting way to do so is by looking at recent players of fhe year and how they have fared at the next level. The holiday break gave me a chance to look into how the last 10 POY in the big six conferences have done in the NBA, with some interesting findings.*

I broke the players into 6 categories: MVPs (6 pts); All stars (5); starters (3); in the rotation (2); earning a pro paycheck (1); busts (0).*

Using the categories here is how the conferences stack up:

SEC - 22

ACC - 21

Big 12 - 20

PAC 12 - 18

Big East - 16

Big 10 - 10

Though it's not a balanced hoops conference it's not surprising to see the SEC on top, buoyed by one MVP type, Anthony Davis, an all star in John Wall coupled with starters and solid rotation guys. The SEC also had the fewest busts.

The ACC picked up points with 4 starters (Reddick twice, Zeller, and Lawson) plus lots of rotation players. Surpisingly and embarrassingly, no recent ACC player of the year has made an NBA all star game. The conference that produced Jordan, Duncan, Worthy, Carter, etc. seems to have stopped producing them.**

The Big 12 rode two stars - Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin - with a good number of starters and rotation guys (Marcus Thornton, Glen Davis, Markieff Morris, Michael Beasley) adding points. The PAC 12 used the same formula, and scored better than expected, thanks to two All Stars in Kevin Love and James Harden plus some rotation guys (Josh Childress, Derrick Williams).

As expected the Big 10 and Big East, two conferences where players never seem to learn how to pass or shoot (with the exception of UConn) brought up the rear. The recent emergence of Randy Foye and Jeff Green were the Big East's saving graces. And who would have guessed that Draymond Green is the only Big 10 POY in the last decade to amount to anything in the League?***

* This is hardly the best way to look at player's impact. Kyrie Irving, for instance, only played 9 games for Duke so was never a candidate for player of the year, yet is an All Star. One and done players do not always win POY, though Davis and Wall did for Kentucky.

** An exception is Chris Paul, who in his two years at Wake was rookie of the year and first team all ACC, but lot POY honors to Jared Dudley and Tyler Hansbrough.

***  Michigan's Trey Burke may change that.