By Cameron Stewart |@ThatManCam
Sports Capital Journalism Program
HOUSTON — Before the season that would turn Oklahoma guard Buddy Hield into a household name, he set some goals. Not satisfied with the Big 12 Player of the Year accomplishment he earned last season, Hield raised his expectations up a notch. Hield set three goals: win national player of the year, make it to the Final Four, and bring Oklahoma basketball its first NCAA title.
Having already checked off making the Final Four after knocking off top-seeded Oregon in the Elite Eight, Hield can add winning national player of the year to his accomplishments.
On Friday, Hield won the prestigious Oscar Robertson Award for most outstanding player in the nation as voted by the United States Basketball Writers Association. Hield beat out Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine in a 144-108 vote. Hield, a 6-foot, 4-inch senior, averaged 25.4 points and 5.7 rebounds per game while shooting 46.5 percent on three-pointers on his way to cementing his name in college basketball history by winning the award.
Robertson, the player of the year in 1959 and 1960, the first two seasons the USBWA presented the award, spoke of a far less scrutinized time. “I didn’t even know it,” Robertson said of the award. “They sent a letter to the coach. I don’t remember if they gave me a letter saying I was player of the year.” The 1959 and 1960 Cincinnati Bearcats lost national semifinal games.
If Hield can check off his final goal for the season of winning a national title, he’ll have to defy the trends of history to do so.
When Oklahoma tips off against Villanova on Saturday night, Hield will become the 31st winner of the USBWA player of the year to play in the Final Four. While the number of winners to make the Final Four is a substantial number given the madness that happens every year during the NCAA Tournament, the results for those players are mixed. Only 10 of the 30 winners before Hield went on to capture the national title.
Even worse for Oklahoma’s chances, the winner of the Oscar Robertson Trophy has cut down the nets after the final game only four times since Bill Walton did it for UCLA in 1973. Only Kentucky’s Anthony Davis in 2012 and Duke’s Shane Battier in 2001 have been able to win both the Oscar Robertson Trophy and win the national title in the same season in the last 15 years. In those instances, both Davis and Battier went on to win Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. It’s worth mentioning that Davis and Battier also took home the National Association of Basketball Coaches Defensive Player of the Year award.
One of the reasons for the relatively low amount of Oscar Robertson Trophy winners to win the national title is that their teams simply rely too much on them to be great, which can be done successfully early in the tournament but becomes much tougher to win with against better competition and better coaching. For players like Davis and Battier, they made their presence known defensively even when the ball was not in their hands or their shots weren’t falling.
Hield, for all his brilliance and versatility, is not viewed as a defensive force on the level of Davis or Battier. However that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t impact the game when he’s not scoring. Hield is such a talent on the offensive end that the attention paid to him by the defense opens things up for his teammates. Like defense, this skill may not show up in the box score, but shows up in the win column.
“They recognize Buddy is at the core of everything we do offensively,” Oklahoma coach Lon Kruger said when asked how having a star player like Hield can sometimes be a negative to the team dynamic. “Yet they know that because of the attention Buddy gets from defenses, they’ve got to be able to step up and deliver when needed, and those guys have done that time after time.”
For Oklahoma to cut down the nets after the championship game on Monday, the Sooners will need Hield to play like the superstar he is. After all that Hield’s accomplished this season, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if he is crossing off one more box on his list of goals.
