In his one-year blitz through the Pac-12, Arizona’s Deandre Ayton made impressions that won’t fade anytime soon.
Even before the conference’s coaches made him only the third freshman ever to win the Pac-12’s Player of the Year award on Monday, Oregon coach Dana Altman said he’d “never seen anybody like that” in his eight years in the league.
ASU’s Bobby Hurley, who played for Duke in the ACC, went so far as to say Ayton “may be the best big I’ve seen in college as a player or coach.”
Pac-12 Networks analyst Casey Jacobsen, who played for Stanford, said Monday of Ayton that “a player of his status comes around once every two decades or so” and marveled at how quickly Ayton has picked up the game since converting from his soccer days as a Bahamian youth.
“This guy’s a natural,” Jacobsen said on the Pac-12’s awards show. “He’s getting better every single month.”
Of course, those are the kinds of words that UA coach Sean Miller has said all season. Miller even went so far as to say last Saturday he thought the vote for Ayton would be “unanimous” – though coaches can’t vote for their own players – so he was hardly surprised when the award was announced Monday.
“I think all of them realized he doesn’t come along very often,” Miller said on his weekly radio show. “The Pac-12 should be very proud to have him as part of our conference.”
The only previous freshmen to win the Pac-12 Player of the Year award since it began in 1975-76 were Cal’s Shareef Abdur-Rahim (1995-96) and UCLA’s Kevin Love (2007-08).
Ayton took it this time by posting 21 double-doubles over the course of the regular season, while leading the conference in rebounding during Pac-12 games (11.4) and becoming the second-leading scorer (20.2) in conference games, behind only UCLA’s Aaron Holiday (21.7).
Neither Miller nor Ayton were available to local media on Monday, when UA’s usual weekly news conference was canceled for a second straight week. But Ayton told Pac-12 Networks he was blessed to be given the honor.
“I worked really hard on my game,” Ayton said. “I try to be a great person off the court and put God first.”
Miller said Ayton “put an exclamation point” on his season when he collected 26 points and 20 rebounds in UA’s regular-season finale against Cal last Saturday, the first “20-20” game a UA player has had since the Wildcats joined the Pac-12 in 1978.
Ayton also became the all-time leading Arizona freshman scorer, collecting 616 points so far to surpass the previous record of 592 set by Jerryd Bayless in 2007-08, and his 21 double-doubles are just one shy of the UA record set by Al Fleming in 1974-75.
A week before the Cal game, while Oregon fans booed and teased Ayton after ESPN reported that Miller allegedly discussed paying him $100,000, Ayton had 28 points on 11-for-15 shooting and 18 rebounds.
“I try to be a professional about it and I didn’t even engage into any foolishness that was going on,” Ayton said.
“I just did what I had to do. As Allonzo (Trier) said, it’s our team against the world and I tried to play as hard as I can.”
Earlier Monday, Ayton and Trier were named to the Pac-12’s 10-player all conference team, while UA center Dusan Ristic made the five-player second team and forward Rawle Alkins earned honorable mention honors.
The Pac-12 also announced that Washington’s Matisse Thybulle was the conference’s Defensive Player of the Year and Huskies coach Mike Hopkins was Coach of the Year.
Thybulle led the Pac-12 in steals by averaging 2.7 steals a game in conference play, while Hopkins led the Huskies to a 20-11 record (10-8 in conference) after Washington was just 9-22 and 2-16 last season.
Washington State’s Robert Franks was named the Pac-12’s Most Improved Player award after becoming the sixth-leading scorer (16.9 points) in conference games. Franks averaged just 6.4 points last season, but lost 25 pounds in the offseason.
The newly reinstated Pac-12 Sixth Man Award was a tie between ASU’s Remy Martin and Colorado’s Dom Collier, while Stanford’s Dorian Pickens was named Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
Rim shots
• Miller said on his radio show that freshman forward Ira Lee practiced Monday and would be available for the Pac-12 Tournament after missing the past four games with a concussion he suffered in practice on Feb. 20.
