Who's the top women's player of the year candidate in every conference?

[ZagDad84]

From ESPNW:

Who's the top women's player of the year candidate in every conference?
Graham Hays
ESPN.com
7:00 AM PT

Sure, Sabrina Ionescu makes national awards more and more of a foregone conclusion with each triple-double she adds to the record book. But 32 players will soon earn conference player of the year honors, recognized as the most influential players in their own basketball kingdoms. So as conference tournaments open as early as Sunday -- and the women's NCAA tournament tips off March 20 -- we handicap the player of the year races in all 32 Division I conferences.

Here's the criteria we emphasized:
Season-long performance matters for context, but these real-life awards are designed to reward performance in conference games. These picks therefore emphasize the same thing, and all statistics referenced are conference-only stats, unless otherwise noted.

The debate about most outstanding versus most valuable never ends when it comes to sports awards. But the reality is that a player from a team that isn't at least competitive in its conference has to do something truly spectacular to win. For the most part, the top half of any conference produces the award winners.

And yes, most conferences have more than two worthy candidates. But lest this run to the length of a Russian novel, we capped each conference at two players.
And while there are a few cases in which one team arguably had the conference's top two or three candidates (we're looking at you, UConn), we operated under the assumption that the best candidate from that team eliminates her teammates.

West Coast Conference

Front-runner: Jill Townsend, Gonzaga
Gonzaga remained an ensemble as it climbed toward its current place near the top 10, but Townsend has clearly become first among equals. She is now the only healthy player averaging double digits in WCC play (13.7 PPG). Townsend also rebounds well and is the team's best 3-point shooter.

Top competition: Alex Fowler, Portland
Portland couldn't challenge Gonzaga this season, but its Australian duo of freshman Fowler (17.9 PPG, 7.9 RPG, 2.2 SPG) and sophomore Haylee Andrews signals a bright future.

You can read the entire article here: https://www.espn.com/womens-college-...ery-conference

ZagDad

[seacatfan]

Thanks for posting ZagDad. I didn't look at every conference, checked out several. I might agree w/ Doyle being the front runner in the Big 10, but pretty surprising they went w/ Guirantes for runner up and didn't bother mentioning anybody from conference leaders Maryland and Northwestern. Also interesting nobody from Missouri St. was the front runner or runner up in the Missouri Valley, they are clearly the best team. I gotta think Alexa Willard is a legit candidate. Illinois St. is 7-7. Unless their player is putting up mind blowing numbers, no way she should be considered. They seem to be looking at stats way more than winning games. Oh well, just another click bait article but it worked, generated dissent and discussion.