NCAA Basketball: 10 best bets to win 2021-22 Naismith Player of the Year
By Tommy Farmer
Marcus Carr +3000
April Headline: Carr, Beard Prove to be The Missing Pieces in Longhorn’s Puzzle
Stuck on a bad Minnesota team in 2020-2021, Marcus Carr was asked to carry an enormous amount of the load offensively. He averaged 19.4 PPG but on a lousy 38.5% from the field, and Minnesota finished second-to-last in the Big Ten. Now since he’s transferred to Texas, we’ll get to see what Carr can do on a team expected to be one of the best in the country.
Texas has a crowded backcourt with Andrew Jones and Courtney Ramey, but Carr will still be expected to be the best scorer of the three. With new faces all around the Longhorn’s program, Carr will have his chance early to cement himself as the alpha on a team slotted at number five in the preseason AP Poll. This is a position Carr has never truly been in and it will be intriguing to see how his game translates.
Much like other highly touted transfers, we don’t really know exactly how Carr will fit in with Texas. But at 30-1 odds for someone on a top-five team with elite scoring abilities, Carr is a solid value pick to win the Naismith award. There are a lot of variables here, but there are three things I am confident in. Marcus Carr can score, Texas will be very good, and Chris Beard is great at maximizing the talent he has. That’s enough for me to believe in his possible player of the year chances.