The national attention continues for Kris Dunn. Dunn, who scored a career high 32 points while grabbing a career high 8 steals in Providence’s season opening win against Harvard, has been named to the 50 player first release of the Wooden Award watch list. The Wooden Award — named after legendary UCLA coach John Wooden — is given annually to the nation’s top player and this is the first release of the watch list of players that are considered potential winners. Dunn is joined on the list by fellow Big East brethren Jalen Brunson (Villanova), Kellen Dunham (Butler) and D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera (Georgetown).
Now that actual games have gotten underway the accolades coming Kris Dunn’s way are ones he will earn on the court during this season instead of the ones labeled “preseason”. The first such
“in-season” accolade came on Monday when the Big East announced their weekly award winners. Dunn was named the season’s first Big East Player of the Week for his career-high 32 point performance in Providence’s win over Harvard on Saturday.
Getting love from CBS Sports and NBC Sports and even Blue Ribbon College Yearbook is really nice for Kris Dunn. It gives Dunn and Providence time in the national spotlight and gets people all across the basketball world talking about Dunn and the Friars. The Associated Press All-American Team is a different ballgame.
The national attention and praise for Kris Dunn keeps rolling in as College Basketball Talk at NBCSports.com named Dunn the top player in college basketball for the 2015-16 season. This is the second major national publication to declare Dunn the top player this year as CBS Sports did the same earlier this month. In addition to these accolades Dunn has also been named to Preseason All-American teams by Blue Ribbon College Yearbook, Sporting News and CBSSports.com. Blue Ribbon and CBSSports.com were First Team proclamations while Sporting News placed Dunn on their Second Team. You can find all of Dunn’s honors on his microsite created by Providence’s athletic department.
Providence College Athletics sent out a release on Wednesday that they will launch a Kris Dunn microsite at 10am on October 1st as part of Friars.com. The site will feature information about Dunn and be updated as the 2015-16 season goes on. This is a welcome sign from Providence Athletics as they have sometimes struggled to market and publicize their star players.
Whenever someone asks me if Providence is going to be good this season my answer always involved some form of “they’ll go as far as Kris Dunn can take them.” Dunn is the reigning Big East Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year and he is poised to have a monster season — one that is likely to be his final in a Friar uniform. Heading into this campaign there was expected hype around Dunn. He has been named to some preseason All-American teams by various publications and is likely to be the coaches’ pick for preseason Big East Player of the Year at the league’s media day in mid-October. One of the publications that included him on their First Team All-American squad was the famed Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook. On Tuesday their editor-in-chief Chris Dortch announced they would be naming Dunn as their Preseason National Player of the Year when the 35th anniversary edition of Blue Ribbon in a few weeks.
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