When citing conference stats, I was going by these numbers.

Player of the Year: Scottie Reynolds, Villanova

This would have been easier to pick if that final three had dropped against West Virginia, but I'm still very happy to go with Reynolds as the Big East Player of the Year.   A lot of worthy candidates, but I don't think any player in the Big East was quite as scary to go against as Villanova's senior guard.  Once he started to heat up, there was a sense there was little if anything you could do to stop it.  Granted, he was playing with a host of weapons around him, meaning his assists became just as deadly as his shooting, but he really killed you from all over the floor.  Reynolds was the third leading scorer in the conference with 19.9 points per game, shooting 50% from the field, 84% from the line and 42% from three, with a steal and a half per game to boot.

Although I despise when any award is given with a sort of nod to the career in mind, it helps that we've seen Reynolds come a long, long way in his time with the Wildcats.  He started out as a talented but uneven freshman, capable of doing things like out-gunning Kevin Durant but with the occasional dose of trying to do too much, over-dribbling and jacking up bad shots.  By the time he was putting Villanova in the Final Four with some last second heroics over Pittsburgh, everyone was pretty sure the maturation was complete, and they were right.  This season we saw Reynolds at peace with his game and place in the conference, guiding his team to a tie for second place despite a lot of youth around him and inconsistent support from his frontline.  In a league with a lot of worthy players, I think Reynolds proved himself for this award. 

All-Big East First Team:

G Scottie Reynolds, Villanova

G Dominique Jones, South Florida

F Da'Sean Butler, West Virginia

F Wes Johnson, Syracuse

C Greg Monroe, Georgetown

All-Big East Second Team:

G Andy Rautins, Syracuse

G Jeremy Hazell, Seton Hall

F Lazar Hayward, Marquette

F Luke Harangody, Notre Dame

F Samardo Samuels, Louisville

Okay, there's a lot of things to talk about here.  First off, they wanted me to name a Player of the Year and then a five-man first team, but that doesn't make any sense.  Wouldn't your Player of the Year be on the first team?  Who comes off the bench?  Is someone designated?  So I contained my picks to ten people, and it was a difficult challenge, so be gentle.

The next decision to discuss is the one to put Luke Harangody on the second team.  As much as I love Luke, when I'm trying to decide between all of these really great players, I have to take into account the fact Gody missed a quarter of the conference schedule.  Is it his fault?  Absolutely not, but 18 games of any of those guys on the first team is better than 13 of Luke Harangody.  Am I happy about this?  No, but I will try to make up for it by being a total homer later.

Other tough decisions were whether to put Jones or Hazell (or attempt to squeeze both of them) onto the first team.   Bob from GonzoBall went with Jones, so I figured if the Seton Hall guy was putting his own man on the second team, that was the tie-breaker.  Da'Sean Butler was probably second in my Player of the Year thinking, and he should get extra credit because he does excellent work without a point guard to get him easy buckets in an offense that is painful to watch sometimes.  Plus he beat Scottie Reynolds head-to-head just two days ago.  If Wes Johnson hadn't hurt his hand and seen his production tail off, he might have claimed the crown, but he'll have to settle for a First Team position.

My eleventh man?  Providence's Jamine Peterson.  I couldn't pick Peterson out of a line-up of guys wearing name tags, but his stats in Big East play are absurd: 19.8 points (4^th), 9.8 rebounds (2^nd) and two three-pointers per game (14^th).  He also put up some huge numbers against teams both good (averaged 24 and 13 in two games against Cuse, 24 and 18 at Pitt) and bad (29 and 20 against Rutgers).  But his team went 4-14 and he'll have to wait until next year to get any love, because who do I bump for him, other than maybe Samardo?  And I can't, in good faith, bump the guy who single-handedly submarined Notre Dame in their trip to Freedom Hall for one I don't remember.

There aren't any Pitt players on the team, and the only real option seems to be Ashton Gibbs.  Gibbs is a phenomenal shooter, but he tied Jerome Dyson for 12^th in the league with scoring at 15.9 points per game, and didn't scratch the top of any other category.  Looking at his KenPom numbers, nothing else really jumps out except his ability not to foul or turn the ball over.  I know he hit the onions shots against West Virginia and Providence, but that's not enough to move him ahead of either Rautins or Hazell on the second team. 

Coach of the Year (Tie): Jim Boeheim, Syracuse and Jamie Dixon, Pittsburgh

Before things tipped off in November, not much was expected from the teams that lost what was basically an All-Big East team between them going into this season.*  Yet here we are in March and perched at the top of the conference are Syracuse and Pittsburgh.  Boeheim did it with the better-than-anyone-could-have-expected transfer Wes Johnson, the leadership of Andy Rautins and some big trees in the paint.  Honestly, I still don't know how Dixon did it, MacGyvering the number two seed in the Big East tournament together with only one senior in the starting lineup.  I'm not picking between these two, because they both deserve it.

* No, but seriously:

G Levance Fields

G Jonny Flynn

F Sam Young

F Paul Harris

C DeJuan Blair

6^th man: Eric Devendorf

Mike Brey should also get some recognition for the work he did following Luke Harangody's injury, emptying his bench and completely changing the team's style of play to survive in the best conference in the land, but this award goes to the guys at the top who weren't supposed to be there.

Freshman of the Year: Lance Stephenson, Cincinnati

Stephenson's rookie year at Cincinnati could be looked at in a couple of ways.  On one hand, a player with the recruiting pedigree of Stephenson should probably produce more than he did in league games.  On the other, a guy that came with all the red flags that Stephenson did should have caused more trouble than he did with the Bearcats.  It wasn't a huge year for freshmen in the league (JACK COOLEY), so Stephenson sort of gets this by default over the likes of Rutgers' Dane Miller and UConn's Alex Oriakhi, but for not falling apart under the microscope of the media and turning in a competent first year, he did his part to help earn it.

Most Improved Team: South Florida

The Bulls were 7-29 the last two seasons in the Big East, and this year they started 0-4.  After that ugly beginning, they won nine of the next fourteen, including victories over perennial Big East powers Georgetown, Pittsburgh and UConn.  Led by Dominique Jones on the court and coached by former Kent State and Arkansas head man Stan Heath (in his third year in Tampa), the Bulls were a legit threat in every game.  While Notre Dame swept them, that easily could have gone the other way, with the Bulls sitting on the inside of the tournament looking out.  As it stands, they're a threat in the Garden, and after seven wins in two years, that's quite the achievement.

Most Improved Player: Tim Abromaitis, Notre Dame

Abro played forty minutes total in the 2007-2008, red-shirted last year and ended this season as one of the best shooters in the country.  (No, really.  Check it out here and here.)  He was also the sixth leading scorer in league play with 18.2 points per game, shooting 86.7% from the free throw line and 41.3% from behind the arc.  Most importantly, he played a critical role in his team not just surviving but thriving without their star player, making up for a late-season shooting slump by continually finding himself in the lane or around the rim.  Far from a simple jump shooter, Abro developed a well-rounded offensive game that only looks to get better over the next two years.

Best Game (Tie):

February 12: Pittsburgh 98 West Virginia 95 (3OT)

February 17: Louisville 91 Notre Dame 89 (2OT)

You're probably going to need at least a single overtime period to be in consideration for this list, and with these two great games combining for twenty-five minutes of bonus basketball, just one wasn't going to cut it.  Both wove beautiful but different stories that heightened the drama, even though play wasn't the cleanest throughout either of them.  In the first, it was a revenge game in a heated rivalry, taking place a week and a half after Pitt was embarrassed on the scoreboard and battered by debris from the stands in Morgantown.  The Friday night showdown was a battle of big shot after big shot.  The first came after a surprising Pitt steal at the end of regulation, with Ashton Gibbs draining a three to tie the game with 24 seconds left in regulation to force OT.  After Gibbs missed a free throw with seven seconds remaining in overtime, Truck Bryant took advantage, making his own deep trey to extend the game another five minutes.  Da'Sean Butler took over in the second overtime, scoring the final five points of the period to again lengthen the game, this time after Pitt missed a couple of looks as time ran down.  The big shots finally ran out, and in front of a frenzied but well-behaved crowd in the ‘Burgh, the Panthers avenged their earlier loss in the Backyard Brawl, knocking off the #4 Mountaineers in triple overtime.  Round three could occur in the Big East semis this Friday night in the Garden.

The second game I'm voting for was far less heralded beforehand, but the story became clear as the night in Freedom Hall wore on.  The Fighting Irish were wounded and left for dead, playing their second complete game without Luke Harangody and coming off a home loss to St. John's.  The Cardinals were looking to quickly dispatch the haggard Irish and defend homecourt in business-like fashion.  What Louisville got was a brawl of their own, as little-used big men Jack Cooley and Mike Broghammer got their first extended action of the Big East season in an attempt to contain Samardo Samuels, who played the game of his life.  Scoring 36 points and fouling out four separate post defenders, Samuels was Rick Pitino's offense.  On the other end, it was the trio of Tory Jackson, Ben Hansbrough and Tim Abromaitis that spread and shred the Louisville defense, combining for 61 points.  In the end, the Cardinals won the war of attrition, but the Irish found their new identity and haven't lost since.  A rematch could occur in the Big East tournament Friday night.