AE Predicts The Big East Men's Basketball Awards

Presuming they do things the same as last year, tomorrow the Big East will announce the all conference teams before announcing the major individual honors right before the Big East tournament. So that leaves us to make some predictions now before it's too late. So here's what we've got!

Player Of The Year: Otto Porter, Georgetown. The Big East had 11 different players named Player Of The Week in the first 13 weeks of the season. Porter's won the last 3. He's your Player Of The Year.

Defensive Player Of The Year: Chris Obekpa, St. John's. Oblockpa is currently second in the COUNTRY in blocks. I don't need to explain this to you any further.

Freshman Of The Year: JaKarr Sampson, St. John's. He's the best scoring and rebounding freshman in the conference and won Freshman Of The Week seven times.

Coach Of The Year: Buzz Williams, Marquette. Anyone who lost the Big East Player Of The Year and the Big East's leading scorer who were two DIFFERENT players and still can get their team back to being on the verge of a share of the regular season title as of this writing wins in our book. Plus there's that whole "picked to finish seventh" thing. I will listen to arguments for Ed Cooley as well.

All-Big East First Team:

Bryce Cotton, Providence

Sean Kilpatrick, Cincinnati

Shabazz Napier, Connecticut

Otto Porter, Georgetown

Russ Smith, Louisville

Brandon Triche, Syracuse

I left out D`Angelo Harrison for getting suspended near the end of the season, Jack Cooley because I don't like him, and LaDontae Henton because yeah, Providence has been good this year, but let's not get out of control here.