Hello All, this is my first post after lurking on the board for quite a while. I am from CT and grew up a die hard husky fan (still am). I started watching and following Uconn basketball in 1994 with the Ray Allen, Marshall, Sheffer and Ollie led squad. With that said, I went to college at SMU and am a mustang fan. When I started attending SMU, I never thought I would have a conflict of interest given the horrid state of SMU athletics at the time. Fast Forward 10 years and we have Larry Brown and share a conference with the team I watched growing up. Living in Dallas, I was able to attend the final four and National Championship last year...what a dream...Shabazz certainly cemented himself on my Uconn Rushmore.
Back to the topic at hand, I thought I would give a bit of perspective as an unbiased party regarding AAC POY. Having watched every SMU game except 1 and all but 2 or 3 Uconn games ( luckily i missed the yale game, as it was during a home SMU game) I feel I can offer some perspective that some of you who have only Seen Nic Moore play 2x.
BOTH Nic and Boat are deserving and I wouldn't have a problem either way. Boat's scoring is slightly better, as it has to be to make Uconn go. I would say the overall talent on Uconn is better although D-Ham's talent and potential surpass anything on SMU's roster, he's far from a finished product. Smu runs its offense through the bigs...Kennedy, Yanick and Cunningham can all score double digits on a given night and Moore isn't always needed to go off for 20..but when its needed he does. Nic Moore is the straw that stirs the SMU drunk, he makes the entire team run. SMU couldn't function without him..he is that valuable. He has gotten in foul trouble a few games and when he is on the bench it is as if we have no offense...Moore is also extremely clutch hitting huge 3's in pressure situations...he has a little shabazz in him in regards to the clutch gene and size of his nuts.
As for boat, without him, Uconn would probably be struggling to compete with the bottom of the barrel AAC schools. his ability to get to the rim is unparalleled. However, I don't think he has that clutch gene.
Again, I don't think you could go wrong with boat or Nic for POY, and just thought I would offer some perspective from someone who is a diehard husky and mustang fan.
Here's to running the table in Hartford so I can have both my teams dancing.