Alternate headline: "It's Tyler Zeller's world, we just live in it"
Tyler Zeller capped off an impressive regular season by becoming the 13th Tar Heel to be named ACC Player of the Year. He is the third under Roy Williams to do so joining former teammates Ty Lawson and Tyler Hansbrough. That gives the 2009 UNC team three ACC POY recipients on its roster The full release from the ACC can be found here.
The ACC POY voting looked like this:
Tyler Zeller, North Carolina (45 votes)
Mike Scott, Virginia (14)
Harrison Barnes, North Carolina (2)
John Henson, North Carolina (1)
The voting probably should have been closer between Zeller and Mike Scott but I imagine the impact of the UNC-Duke game turned a lot of votes. Inexplicably there were three voters who had Harrison Barnes and John Henson on their ballots for ACC POY. I am willing to give someone a pass on Henson(to a point) but voting for Barnes looks like the act of someone working off preseason thinking and the fact Barnes scored more points per game.
John Henson became the first player since Duke's Shelden Williams to garner back-to-back ACC Defensive Player of the Year honors. Henson averaged 3.0 bpg and dominated the board with over 10 rpg, 7.6 of those coming on the defensive end. Henson's value went well beyond the numbers given the number of shots he altered. In addition his length helped when hedging on ball screens around the perimeter and guarding baseline inbound passes.
FSU's Leonard Hamilton was named ACC Coach of the Year(by one vote over Mike Krzyzewski) and Duke's Austin Rivers was named Rookie of the Year.
Correction: I originally wrote Zeller was the 14th Tar Heel to win the award. That was incorrect. Larry Miller won it twice in 1967 & 1968 so in actuality on 13 Tar Heels have won the award.