NCAA Basketball: 4 candidates remain in National Player of the Year race
By Brian Rauf
There are currently only four serious NCAA Basketball National Player of the Year contenders. Here’s how they stack up against each other.
As we hit the final month and a half of the NCAA Basketball regular season (can you believe it’s already February? Where has 2020 gone, amirite?), it has become perfectly clear who belongs in the top tier of National Player of the Year contenders.
Right now, only four players make that cut – Dayton’s Obi Toppin, Iowa’s Luka Garza, Oregon’s Payton Pritchard, and Seton Hall’s Myles Powell.
Yes, there are plenty of other quality players across the country, but they would have to make a pretty significant leap to enter the same realm as those four.
I look at it this way: When naming first-team All-Americans through this point in the year, everyone names those four players. Some have Markus Howard as the other player on their first team, while others may look at Cassius Winston or Malachi Flynn. Anyways, you get the picture.
That fifth spot is debatable – the other four or not.
However, there is not a distinct order between those four. It’s typically very fluid from week to week, but the past few days have brought about a bit of stability.
Who is leading the race going into February, and how do the rest of the contenders stack up against each other? Find out in our latest National Player of the Year Power Rankings.