Scoop Jardine says Hardy is Player Of The Year

ESPN had 6 players blogging for them all year. One from each of the major conferences. Now out the end of the year they have these guys handing out awards. It's an Insider Article so I pasted the part from Jardine. If you have ESPN insider here is the link.

http://insider.espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/blog?name=conference_voices&id=6192499&ex_cid=nhffromfb


Big East (Scoop Jardine, Syracuse)


Player of the Year: Dwight Hardy, St. John's
Marshon Brooks has made a stamp on our league and he brings it every night but in this game, winning is everything. I'll take Hardy because, just like Brooks, he really kind of came out of nowhere this year. And Hardy helped get his team from near the bottom of the league last year to pretty close to the top this season.

Coach of the Year: Steve Lavin, St. John's
With so much talent in the league you could split those awards up between different schools. But last year Coach Boeheim was Coach of the Year and Wesley Johnson got Player of the Year because we won. That's the way it goes. You have to give it to Lavin for the turnaround. They beat Duke, UConn, Villanova, Pittsburgh in one season. He might get national coach of the year.

Conference tourney winner: Pittsburgh
I don't feel comfortable with this answer because I believe we're going to do it. So let the record show that I'm only picking another team because I have to. I guess Pittsburgh. They've proven they can win almost anywhere. Well, except the Garden because St. John's beat them there.

Darkhorse: Rutgers
They play hard on every possession. If you don't play your best best basketball they could beat you on any given night. They proved that in the win over Villanova. Coach Rice gets the best out of them. When we played them I can honestly say they gave everything. They're tough, a really tough team on both ends.

Number of Tourney bids for Big East: 11
It's the best conference in the country. You have some conferences where the top team only has one or maybe two losses. At the top of our league, Pitt has three and Louisville, Notre Dame have more. People will point to the unbalanced schedule but our league is so strong that if we all faced each other twice we'd probably just end up splitting those games.

Some nice praise from the competition.

That's surprising. Scoop took us apart at MSG. I guess he was stunned at how well we played after that loss. We only lost 4 games after that beat down. We have to take get revenge against Seton Hall and Syracuse in our house. No way around it.