The first weekly awards have been announced, and Jalen Johnson picks up the first Freshman of the Week honors. His historic 19-19-5-(7) performance was the first major conference player debut since at least 2000 to record 15+ points, 15+ rebounds, and 5+ steals.
Virginia Tech's Keve Aluma won the Player of the Week honors after averaging 18 points, 5 rebounds, and 1.8 blocks, including an upset over Villanova on Saturday night.
Thus returns the strange ACC tradition of awarding a non-freshman POTW honors despite posting inferior numbers.
Yeah, and Jalen did have 7 turnovers. Interestingly, from an "advanced stat" perspective, despite being perfect from the field and FT line, those 7 turnovers caused Jalen to have essentially the same "offensive rating" as Aluma versus Villanova even though Aluma only shot 9 for 14 (and 4 for 7 from FT) against Nova. I'm okay with rewarding Aluma for his performance in the conference's best win of the season thus far.
DJ Steward was awarded the Freshman of the Week honors for his 16 point/5 rebound performance against Notre Dame.
Also astounding is that Mr Aluma (VTech) is the Player of week in ACC as a Wofford transfer. He came with Mike Young from Wofford. So did Hunter Catoor. Two of their best 7 players at VT are Wofford guys. and Aluma is probably the best guy there. The SoCon has some good players. Heck, my Furman guys led Bama for 38+ minutes.. but that last minute counts more..
Matthew Hurt and DJ Steward took home Player of the Week and Freshman of the Week honors from the ACC, respectively.
Hurt leads all ACC players in scoring at 19.6 points and is 4th in rebounding at 8.1 per game.