NCAA Basketball: 10 best bets to win 2021-22 Naismith Player of the Year
By Tommy Farmer
Max Abmas + 1500
April Headline: The Next Curry? Abmas Follows Up Tournament Run with Record-Breaking Season
Last March, Max Abmas announced his coming out party with huge performances against Ohio State, Florida, and Arkansas. Almost no one expected 15-seed Oral Roberts to knock off 2-seed Ohio State in the first round, let alone make it to the Sweet 16 and take 3-seed Arkansas down to the wire. Well, they did all of those things in large part thanks to Abmas’s 29, 26, and 25-point performances.
Before Abmas shocked the world in March, he led a quieter attack against the rest of college basketball. Abmas edged out Luka Garza to become the 2020-2021 Division One scoring leader with an impressive 24.5 PPG. He shot 42.9% from behind the arc and a solid 89.0% from the charity stripe.
While Oral Roberts won’t get the national attention that the teams of other NPOY candidates will, Abmas still has a path to the award. The Golden Retrievers have a few notable games early in the season against Colorado State, Oklahoma State, and TCU. If Oral Roberts can win a couple of those games and make some noise early in the season, more eyes will be on Abmas for the rest of the year.
Clearly Abmas has shown he can score with the best in the country, but to win the Naismith he’d need to go beyond just leading the country in scoring again. If Abmas leads the Golden Retrievers to another winning season and averages around 28-30 PPG, I don’t see why he wouldn’t have a legitimate shot at the award. Without Kevin Obanor this season, Oral Roberts will be relying on Abmas more than ever to make that happen.