The Race for Big East Player of the Year

Devin Carter vs. Tristen Newton vs. Baylor Scheierman

We have reached the final week of the college basketball regular season. It’s been quite the rollercoaster of emotions, especially for those of us with a rooting interest in the Providence Friars. While the success of the 2023-24 season is still up in the air, with much of it to be determined on Saturday night against the #2 ranked UConn Huskies, one thing that has been decided for quite some time is that Devin Carter has put up one of the most impressive season’s in the Big East. In my opinion Carter has put up one of the more memorable seasons in Friartown history, but we’ll save that judgment for a later day once all the wins and losses have been finalized.

The Big East Player of the Year award winners over the last decade

For now, we turn our attention to the Big East Player of the Year Race. Two weeks ago this looked like a legitimate 5 man argument between Carter, Creighton’s Baylor Scheierman, UConn’s Tristen Newton, Seton Hall’s Kadary Richmond and the reigning player of the year from Marquette, Tyler Kolek. Since then Richmond and Seton Hall have fizzled, and it was announced earlier this week that will miss the final 3 games of the regular season (and perhaps more) due to a strained oblique. That leaves Carter, Newton and Scheierman, who to be fair have been the 3 best players this season, battling it out for the prestigious award. I’ll do my best to remove my Friar-tilted bias in this evaluation, but before I do so let me just point out that Providence has now had back to back year’s with a player in the top 3 of the Big East Player of the Year race (Bryce Hopkins finished 2nd last year to Kolek). Alright, rant over, lets parse out who deserves to be Big East Player of the Year, and more importantly, who is actually going to win.

Baylor Scheierman (Creighton):

The Stats: 30 Games (30 Starts), 36.2 minutes, 18.5 points (47.5% FG, 37.7% 3PT, 86.0% FT), 8.9 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 1.0 steals per game

Now this is just silly. Not only does Scheierman lead the Big East in 3 pointers made (93), he’s also one of the better rebounders in the conference. There is nobody even in his area code on this one, but Devin Carter is that closest data point to the left.

The Argument:

Scheierman, who Friar fans are quite familiar with from his days at South Dakota State, has made a massive leap in his second year at Creighton. He is Creighton’s leading scorer, rebounder and 2nd in assists, and is the best shooter on a team filled with snipers. Similar to Providence, Creighton only goes 7 deep comfortably, so Scheierman has had to carry a load not all that dissimilar to Devin Carter. He’s second in the Big East in minutes per game (Carter is third), and third in scoring (Carter is second). He also had the first traditional triple double in Creighton’s history against Georgetown this year which, yeah I know it’s Georgetown but you still have to go out and actually do it.

Creighton had a few slip ups earlier this season but are peaking at just the right time, Scheierman has been their superman and is a deserving finalist for Big East Player of the Year.

Devin Carter (Providence):