Vernon Carey may be the ACC’s best player, but he won’t win player of the year
There’s only one ACC player among the five Naismith Award finalists for national player of the year, Duke’s Vernon Carey. Analytically speaking, Carey is the KenPom player of the year in the ACC and seventh nationally.
In open voting, Carey might very well win ACC player of the year. The freshman center has as good a case as anyone, but he won’t get to make it.
Duke nominated Tre Jones for player of the year and Carey only for rookie of the year, and while Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said Friday he wished Duke could nominate both, the Blue Devils could have, if they so chose. They did last year with Zion Williamson and RJ Barrett, with Willamson the clear winner on his way to a sweep of national awards, no harm done.
But in a year without a Zion-esque, no-crap candidate in the ACC, Duke had to make a decision whether to nominate both Jones and Carey and risk fracturing their support or pick one and give that player the best chance to win in a wide-open field.
“Probably overall, because of his running of our team and everything, Tre has been our most important,” Krzyzewski said. “Vernon has been there for some player-of-the-year-honors, even nationally. That would be a tough decision. And I’m not saying other kids in our conference don’t deserve it, but they’ve been our two most important players. Tre, because of his leadership, ball-handling, the consistency of play, would be just a little bit above that.”
Vote-splitting is a legitimate concern in a season when the ACC lacked a true standout player. Louisville’s Jordan Nwora, the preseason player of the year, went through prolonged spells of ineffectiveness in conference play. Cole Anthony looked like a runaway winner after all of one game, before the North Carolina freshman got hurt and then took a while to find his footing upon his return.
Notre Dame’s John Mooney has been the conference’s most consistent player, but plays for a .500 team. Syracuse’s Elijah Hughes has a similar problem, and neither has been so exceptional as to make their team’s performance irrelevant. And the ACC’s other top teams — Florida State and Virginia — are built around an ensemble cast with players worthy of all-ACC consideration but without an obvious star.
The two best candidates are probably Jones, Duke’s sophomore point guard and floor leader, and Carey, the explosive post player who was going to win freshman of the year regardless. Both are locks to be first-team all-ACC.
But it creates the possibility, albeit unlikely, Carey could win the Naismith Award or Oscar Robertson Trophy as the best player in the country without being named the best player in his own conference, a remarkable feat of cognitive dissonance.
It’s fair to ask whether teams should even be forced to specifically nominate player-of-the-year candidates for a voting population that should — emphasis on should — be able to identify the most deserving players for that award, even if there’s obvious utility in having teams nominate defensive players and other potentially overlooked candidates deeper down the ballot.
But this is a feature of the system, not a bug, precisely to give teams an option in situations like this, whether it’s steering voters toward one lesser-known player and away from another who may get more public credit in defensive-player-of-the-year voting or a more visible instance like multiple player-of-the-year candidates. It’s Duke’s choice whether to throw both into the fray and deal with the consequences or try to massage the situation to give one a better chance of winning, a difficult and delicate decision fraught with peril.
Duke put all its chips on Jones, assuming Carey will be rookie of the year, the seventh in the past nine years from Duke, but assuring he will not become the third straight Duke freshman to be named the best player in the ACC. Even if he also turns out to be the best player in the country.
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 2:29 PM.
