There are five games left in the Big East regular season for women’s basketball. Let’s make some postseason award picks, and no, this is not going to take very long because the trophies are going to exactly the women you think they are going to this year.
Big East Player Of The Year: Sarah Strong, Connecticut
She was Big East Player of the Week seven times this season, and five times she was stopped from being POTW by her own teammates. She made up for that by making the Weekly Honor Roll five times, only one of which was when her teammates were POTW. She leads the conference (and thus undefeated UConn) in points and steals per game. She leads UConn in rebounds and blocks and is just half an assist per game behind KK Arnold in that department. She is top five in the league in points, rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals. She leads the league in field goal percentage. She is shooting 41% on three-point attempts on the 3.8 times per game she bothers to do that.
If you are picking someone else, you are doing it just to be cute.
Big East Coach Of The Year: Geno Auriemma, Connecticut
They’re undefeated. I don’t want to hear arguments.
Big East Freshman of the Year: Blanca Quinonez, Connecticut
She was Big East Freshman of the Week seven times this season. Yes, she missed six games in January and February. No, I don’t really care, mostly because she’s been back on the floor for their last three games and averaged 7.0 points, 2.3 rebounds, 1.3 assists, and 3.3 steals in 20 minutes a game. Sounds good to me.
All-Big East Team
Jasmine Bascoe, Villanova
Skylar Forbes, Marquette
Azzi Fudd, Connecticut
Sarah Strong, Connecticut
Mariana Valenzuela, Seton Hall
Strong is the must-have. Fudd goes on the board because I’m not going to try and trick myself into a diverse set of honorees when this year’s version of UConn is this good. Bascoe is the best player on the second best team in the league. Valenzuela is the player that did the most damage against Marquette when I watched MU and Seton Hall this season, so she gets my vote over Savannah Catalon, but I’ll listen to arguments the other direction. Finally, I went full blown homer and went with Forbes, because the scoring average and blocks lead is hard to argue with, even though part of me wants to give the spot to Halle Vice instead. No, I can not take St. John’s seriously enough to put one of the Johnnies in here instead.
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