The US Basketball Writers Association has named UNC senior center Tyler Zeller to its All-American second team. This is the second such honor for Zeller,who was also named second team All-American by The Sporting News in addition to being first team All-ACC, ACC Player of the Year and on the ACC All-Tournament team. Zeller was also named Academic All-American of the Year and last Friday received his second straight Skip Prosser Award for the ACC's top scholar-athlete in men's basketball.
Here is the full release from the USBWA.
Of interest to UNC fans should be the fact two members of the first team are in UNC's path to the Final Four should seeding hold. One is Kansas' Thomas Robinson, the other is Creighton's Doug McDermott who is also a former high school teammate of Harrison Barnes. On the season McDermott averaged 23.2 ppg, 8.2 rpg and hitting 49%(!) of his threes which will be terrifying to watch next Sunday should both schools advance. In fact, the whole situation with McDermott being named All-American and Barnes looking like a good but not great college player is really interesting. Coming out of high school the complete opposite was expected with Barnes being the guy who would put up the nice numbers and McDermott being a good player on a mid-major team. Obviously McDermott's numbers would be different and vice versa if the roles were reversed but if you are Iowa St., you have to be wondering what might have been if somehow both of these players had stayed home.