Big East POY and other awards

[MackNova]

Nobody went into last season thinking Villanova was the most talented team in the league. Jay recruited all these kids and coached them all up, doesn't he get credit for that?

I would have had no issue if it went to Holtmann. In fact, given his circumstances, I probably would have voted for Holtmann. But giving COY to the coach of the team that dominated the league from start to finish isn't a head scratcher at all.

As for my comment about Villanova players before, there aren't many players in the Big East that I would take over any of the top 6 in Nova's rotation. There are definitely a handful, but not many.

[XUFan09]

Irish, I can respect your opinion. I do believe, for the most part, that Butler has done a lot with the talent they have. But that is not to say they are untalented. Just not sure your criteria makes a lot of sense.

So since K Dunham and Roosevelt J were not 4 stars as high schoolers, does that mean they are not two of the best players in the league today? Would you want to swap Jones and Dunham for Bridges (Nova 4 star redshirt) and say Kris Jenkins (4 star bench player)? Is Woods not one of the 4-5 best PF's in the league? Dunham, 2G the same? Jones? Barlow a top 5 league PG? That's a pretty solid core of talent, don't you think?

Agreed with everything but Barlow. He's a good shooter and a great defender but the best compliment you can give him on offense is that he doesn't often make mistakes (which is like how OSU's biggest resume line is "no bad losses"). Reliable point guard, has some good moments as a distributor, but not top 5 in the league. There's a reason that point forward Roosevelt Jones, despite his weak personal offensive rating (97.7), means so much to this team, whose offense has moved up to 61st from 178th with a lot of the same pieces.

Back to the topic at hand, it''s become a regular thing to undervalue Butler's talent because of the players' high school recruiting rankings, and people also love the narrative of the scrappy underdog. It's just not correct. What Butler has made a living out of is finding undervalued players who truly are talented. This team is very talented defensively, with some nice offensive talent too. Holtmann still did some great work with them and made them into more than the sum of their parts (Jones alone isn't responsible for that offensive jump), as I said before, but it's really unfair to the individual players to act like the team doesn't have talent.

[Irishdawg]

Irish, I can respect your opinion. I do believe, for the most part, that Butler has done a lot with the talent they have. But that is not to say they are untalented. Just not sure your criteria makes a lot of sense.

So since K Dunham and Roosevelt J were not 4 stars as high schoolers, does that mean they are not two of the best players in the league today? Would you want to swap Jones and Dunham for Bridges (Nova 4 star redshirt) and say Kris Jenkins (4 star bench player)? Is Woods not one of the 4-5 best PF's in the league? Dunham, 2G the same? Jones? Barlow a top 5 league PG? That's a pretty solid core of talent, don't you think?

I respect your guys' opinions in regards to this as well. I just disagree with them. Even if we weren't looking at high school recruiting rankings, prior to this season, it's fairly obvious what everyone thought of Butler's collective talent, considering they were ranked 7th with Marquette in the coaches poll, and 9th on this board's poll (and they had plenty of votes for 10th as well) and people were asking why the Bulldogs were even invited in the first place. Villanova was the preseason favorite for a reason, with 4 of their 5 starters back, coming off a 16-2 Big East campaign. It shouldn't necessarily be to Jay Wright's detriment that they were picked first and wound up with the same conference record as last year, but I just disagree that it took better coaching to maintain what they had last season with what is a very mature group of players than the job that Holtmann did with a group coming off a 4-14 campaign and only one notable addition coming on board. I'm not saying that I think Holtmann is a better coach than Wright, just that this year, I think his coaching had a greater impact on Butler's improvement (especially considering he only had a hand in recruiting this year's freshman) than Wright's did on his team's expected first place finish.

Like I said, in the grand scheme of things, the award doesn't really matter and I know I have a ton of bias in looking at it, but I'll be interested to see if it continues to just go to the coach who is the #1 seed in the tourney, in which case I will think it's a waste of time to even vote on.

[redmen9194]

The lowest Villanova has been ranked all season is #12. They moved up 8 spots. Holtmann should have gotten it. Not a knock on Jay, not a knock on the Butler players, Holtmann came in under much adversity and got the job done.