Downey will scale the Wall

posted by David Cloninger, 10/21/2009 06:21:00 PM

“All I'm askin',
Is for a little respect.”
------------ ARETHA FRANKLIN

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The media’s choice for SEC basketball was released last week. Twenty-five wizened scribes sat down and made their picks for who’s going to win the league title, the player of the year and which 10 players will make the All-SEC teams.

It is important to note here that preseason honors are worth about as much as verbal agreements. A professor of mine once said that verbal agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re not written on.

Yet, I feel compelled to tell these 25, and some of the other national experts around, my opinion.

You guys screwed up.

Kentucky’s Patrick Patterson was named SEC Player of the Year, receiving 11 votes. Kentucky’s John Wall received six votes. Mississippi State’s Jarvis Varnado and South Carolina’s Devan Downey received three votes each. Tennessee’s Tyler Smith got two votes.

Let’s break that down.

Patterson averaged 17.9 points and 9.3 rebounds per game last year, also contributing 70 blocked shots. Nice.

Varnado scored 12.9, rebounded 8.8 and swatted 170 shots. Incredible.

Wall is a freshman. He has never performed a collegiate dribble, much less played an entire game. Potential, maybe more than most, but potential.

Downey scored 19.8 points and had 89 steals. He is a consensus two-time first-team All-SEC player. If Varnado, Patterson or Wall have bad games, there’s always a combination of players who can step in and fill the void; when Downey has a bad game, the Gamecocks are hurting.

Maybe I should retract that statement. All 25 didn’t screw up.

The three who voted for Downey were absolutely correct. It’s the other 22 that were blinded by the only fact they deemed important – Downey, while a fine, fine player, does not wear blue and white on gameday.

Look, if I had voted, I probably would have voted for Kentucky to win the whole shebang as well. The Wildcats are stacked with an excellent recruiting class, a trio of returning starters and a proven winner in his first year as coach.

But Patterson as player of the year? And Wall as the next-highest vote-getter?

Puh-leeze.

I’m not drinking the azure Kool-Aid. Wall is a terrific freshman, but he’s still a freshman. He’s never played in college, and I don’t care how well his high-school statistics look, they’re still high-school statistics.

(On that note, perhaps folks who rated Wall the best point guard in the country should check out film from Wall’s game against Lakeem Jackson last year. If we’re going by high-school stats to judge a player’s collegiate worth, then Jackson, as he did last year, will tie Wall into a little Kentucky knot. And I don’t see Jackson’s name anywhere on the list of diaper dandies that will supposedly light up the landscape this year).

Downey is the Gamecocks’ engine, the one irreplaceable player they have. He produces on both ends of the floor, gets angry when he’s summoned to the bench even though he knows it’s for rest and is that rare floor general that can take over a game without being selfish.

That’s your preseason player of the year. No question.

Of course, it is a preseason award. I’m sure Downey’s not losing any sleep over the snub.

Although after he outplays Wall on Jan. 26, perhaps the 22 that over-looked him will be.

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