Stop me if you’ve heard this one before — Doug McDermott was named National Player of the Year on Friday.
Twice in as many hours Friday morning, McDermott won POY honors at press conferences in Dallas. First up: The U.S. Basketball Writers Association named him the winner of the Oscar Robertson Trophy, the tenth Player of the Year honor he’s taken home since the end of the regular season. The Oscar Robertson Trophy is voted on by the entire membership of the USBWA association, which consists of more than 900 journalists covering the sport. It is the nation’s oldest college basketball award and the only one named after a former player.
The legendary Oscar Robertson, who played for Cincinnati when they were in the Missouri Valley Conference, was the USBWA’s first player of the year in 1959 and was the consensus national player of the year as a sophomore in 1958, the year before USBWA started giving its player of the year award. The USBWA renamed the award the Oscar Robertson Trophy in 1998.
McDermott will be officially presented the Oscar Robertson Trophy by its namesake, the legendary Oscar Robertson, on Monday, April 14 at the Devon Energy College Basketball Awards gala at National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. According to Kirk Wessler, president of the USBWA and a name familiar to Creighton fans because of his work covering the Bradley Braves for the Peoria Journal-Star, there hadn’t been much discussion about who should get the award since mid-January. From that time on, it was McDermott’s to lose, and instead he made it impossible to imagine anyone else winning it.
A three-time USBWA All-American and two-time USBWA District VI Player of the Year, McDermott was chosen as their national player of the year based on regular-season performance. He is just the 18th player to earn three-time All-America honors from the USBWA and the first since Tyler Hansbrough of North Carolina (2007-09).
Next on his Friday awards circuit, McDermott was honored with the John R. Wooden Award, presented by the Los Angeles Athletic Club annually since 1976. The award was announced as part of the 11am (central) SportsCenter on ESPN, and is one of the most prestigious honors bestowed in the sport.
McDermott is the first senior to win the Wooden Award since Jimmer Fredette of BYU in 2010-11. Though seniors have dominated the voting historically (winning 21 of the 37 awards), 14 of those came in the first 17 seasons of the award. Only three of the last dozen winners have been four-year players (Jameer Nelson, J.J. Redick, and the aforementioned Fredette).
Of the 37 previous winners, McDermott scored the most career points, 3,150, but only the sixth most points in the season he won the award.
| Season | Player | Pts Scored |
|---|---|---|
| 2010-11 | Jimmer Fredette, BYU | 1,068 |
| 1993-94 | Glenn Robinson, Purdue | 1,030 |
| 1978-79 | Larry Bird, Indiana State | 973 |
| 2005-06 | J.J. Redick, Duke | 964 |
| 1987-88 | Danny Manning, Kansas | 942 |
| 2013-14 | Doug McDermott, Creighton | 934 |
Interestingly, McDermott is just the second Big East player ever to win the Wooden Award, and the first since St. John’s took home two straight — Chris Mullin in 1984-85, and Walter Berry in 1985-86. They’ve had four players finish second in the voting. Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing came in second to Mullin in 1984-85, and then a trio of UCONN players were runner-up — Ray Allen in 1995-96, Emeka Okafor in 2003-04, and Kemba Walker in 2010-11. McDermott’s win snaps a 27-year drought for the Big East, the longest drought by far of any conference with multiple winners. Pac-12, you’re on the clock — it’s been 18 years since a player won the award from your league!
Presented to “The Outstanding College Basketball Player in the United States,” the Wooden Award is given to the player who receives the most points in the annual balloting. Unlike almost every other Player of the Year award, however, a candidate’s performance in the regular season, conference tournaments and postseason are taken into account by voters, as is the player’s character.
Talking to Rece Davis on ESPN’s SportsCenter after receiving the award, McDermott said, “It means a lot. It’s been a lot of hard work over the last four years to get to this point, and a lot of that credit goes to my coaching staff and teammates for being so unselfish. This is great for the city of Omaha and for Creighton.”
His coach, Greg McDermott, told Davis in that same interview, “I’m definitely feeling the ‘dad’ part of (the coach/dad relationship) today. It’s been an unbelievable journey, to be able to be on the sideline and witness history, and then for it to be your own son out there accomplishing these monuments, it’s been very special to be a part of.”
“It still hasn’t hit me that I’ve accomplished all of this beside my dad,” Doug continued. “Five or ten years down the road, when we’re on the golf course together, we’ll remember how special it was, and how great of a journey it was.”
McDermott has now been awarded 11 Player of the Year honors, and is the favorite to take home the most prestigious of them all — the Naismith Award, which will be announced at halftime of the National Championship Game next Monday night.