King Tutt, but Walden Snubbed

(St. Louis, MO) – All-American teams are rolling out like new cars off the assembly line. The latest, the all-district teams by the United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA), was announced today.

Missouri Valley Conference fans are cheering and Ohio Valley Conference fans can be heard hissing from Kentucky to Illinois.

MVC tournament champion Northern Iowa and regular season champ Wichita State did very well in their District VI announcement. UNI’s Ben Jacobson was named coach of the year and Seth Tuttle was the player of the year. They were one of four districts where the player of the year and coach of the year came from the same school.

Joining ‘King Tutt’ on the all-district team were Valley members Ron Baker and Fred VanVleet, both from Wichita State. Shocker Head Coach Gregg Marshall won the coach’s honor last year.

District IV, where most of the OVC plays was dominated by some team from Lexington, Kentucky. The Wildcats put four players on the all-district team, including player of the year, Willie Cauley-Stein. John Calipari, with his undefeated record was the easy choice as coach of the year.

The only OVC player saluted in District IV, was OVC Player of the Year Cameron Payne from Murray State. He deserved that accolade, but how did the voters ignore Eastern Kentucky’s Corey Walden? The district covers Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida. Obviously, the competition was steep.

The rest of District VI’s team was Perry Ellis, Kansas; Phil Forte, Oklahoma State; Buddy Hield, Oklahoma; Monte Morris, Iowa State; Le’Bryan Nash, Oklahoma State; Georges Niang, Iowa State; and Aaron White, Iowa.

District IV’s complete team is Devin Booker, Cauley-Stein, Aaron Harrison and Karl-Anthony Towns from Kentucky; Montrezl Harrell and Terry Rozier of Louisville; Stefan Moody, Ole Miss; Payne, Murray State; Josh Richardson, Tennessee; Marcus Thornton, Georgia.

Evansville’s D. J. Balentine, the Valley’s leading scorer (18.9 ppg), was not named to the District V team.

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