North Carolina
Double Davis: UNC's R.J. Davis wins player of the year; Hubert Davis is coach of the year in ACC
North Carolina senior guard RJ Davis was voted the ACC Player of the Year and coach Hubert Davis won the league's honors for Coach of the Year after the Tar Heels claimed their first outright regular-season conference title since 2017.
And because we have ended the season honors, the Oscars were last night. Did you watch Dennis? No, neither did I, but I would watch if they did an AC C honors award ceremony. Um Let's, let's talk the big ones. Uh North Carolina guard RJ Davis is the player of the year. Yeah, I think we could have given that one away about a month ago. Daylight savings was this week. Yeah, tides in and then out, uh tax time coming up. Other things we need to be able to predict. Uh RJ Davis ac C player of the year. You know what if, if there is an argument for guys sticking around RJ Davis might be it. He is somebody that's gotten better throughout his time in, in Carolina. Um At times he took a backseat to people even in his own recruiting class. Uh And, and, you know, if you would have guessed who it would be coming into the season, I'm not sure RJ Davis would have been that guy, but all year he's been that dude for, for the tar heels. Uh He stepped up, he had one of the great scoring tears that we've seen so, uh rightfully so and now that allows him to, you know, go into rarified air of, of North Carolina Greats and he did it, you know, not saying others get asterisks, but it's only his fourth year. Right. This is not a COVID. I feel like anytime someone breaks a record and we have to address that if they had like an extra year that players, you know, years ago didn't have, he did it in four. So credit to him. Um Other Reese Beeman from Virginia AC C defensive player of the year. I, I mean, I agree with it to an extent. Uh Part of me wants to say his teammate, Ryan Dunn should have gotten it. Ryan Dunn got the second most votes. Oh I didn't even see that. Um But you gotta pick someone from that Virginia team like it's on, you know how you talk about like, oh, don't etch it in stone. I feel like you could etch in defensive player of the year. Just the like comma Virginia part and then you have to figure out what name goes in front of it. Like pick which one but, but Beakman back to back defensive players of the year. Not ma not many do that. Um Rookie of the year, if we have a snub, I think this might be it freshman of the year, rookie of the year, Jared mccain, not the winner. Marcus Burton of Notre Dame. Marcus Burton is a good player. Marcus Burton can flat out score. Marcus Burton. I think this is an uh you know, like the Kevin Love in Minnesota thing where it's like if you have no one else out there, you get to pad your stats a little bit more. Jared mccain has to share the stats with significantly more talent at Duke than Burton does at Notre Dame. I would have guessed mccain would, would be that guy. I've been describing mccain as the freshman of the year for the last however many weeks, you're not the only one. I think he's like, if, if an elite eight game came down to like, hey, there's four minutes left, I think I'd rather have mccain on the floor for my team than Burton. That's no disrespect to Burton. That's more praise for, for mccain. What else we got here? Uh First teamers RJ Davis makes sense. PJ Hall makes a lot of sense. Second leading scorer, we've been hyping him up all year. Kyle Filipowski of Duke. The, the stats say he should be there. There's gonna be some AC C fans that like making fun of that one. Hunter Sallis of Wake Forest who was also one of the most improved if you look at that award, uh didn't win it but was up there and Blake Hinson of Pitt, if I'm correct here. Oh, no, never mind. No representative from U VA on the first team. Uh three of the 43 of the five bye week teams all the way to Thursday, Wake Forest buy till uh wait, Forest and Clemson by till till Wednesday. So the better teams were rewarded uh Dennis while I continue scrolling here. What stands out to you? Uh Armando Bacot, second team, a third team. DJ Horn and Harrison Ingram and Jeremy Roach. So three guys here in the triangle all making third team as well as Jerry mccain making an honorable mention. But uh Hubert Davis coach of the year, Hubert Davis coach of the year, I I buy a landslide. Yes, I'm fine with that. I would have also been fine with Jeff Capel. E either of those, I would have been fine with Hubert Davis. People forget how bad Carolina was last year. Uh You know, we were talking about, it looked like this was all fair. We were talking about NC State kinda looked like they had uh packed it in a bit. Um And there were some comparisons to Carolina last year, maybe similar vibes at this point in their, their season to now be almost, you know, the debate is, are they gonna be a one or a two seed in the NCAA tournament? Uh You know, that's a, that's a big come up. Uh But also what Capel was able to do and, you know, who should have probably, I need to make sure he's, he's not on the list before I say like he didn't get any love in coach of the year. You know, who should have gotten more loving coach of the year. Damon Stoudemire of Georgia Tech because the, the cupboard was bare and he has some of the biggest upsets of the season. He beat Duke early in the season. Then he beat Carolina. Right. Yeah, beat Carolina as well. That's, I mean, those two alone right there for a Georgia Tech team that doesn't have much going for them. Uh, only team to beat Wake at Wake and they beat Wake at Wake, which is like the only team to do it. That that's like beating the Lakers and Winston Salem. I mean, if you beat him on the road, that's like beating, you know, Winstonsalem high. That's like, that's like beating a local high school. But, uh but beating him at home, that's like beating the, the dream team. Um I thought Damon Stoudemire should have got more love. He got 111 vote there. I don't know if he should have won the award, but he should have been like, you know, significantly more than one vote. Um Anything else standing out to you? No, sir. Congratulations to everybody. Get yours. Don't give awards back if they want to give them to you don't say, oh, you know, so and so all got snubbed. They should actually win, walk up there, grab the trophy, say thank you and, and then, you know, try to focus in on the AC C tournament. Uh, but that one is, that one is pretty cool for everybody involved.