Wooden Award Agrees on 5 of top 6 Value Add Players

Objective and subjective methods each have advantages, but the Wooden Award team released a mid-season list of potential Players of the Year that included the top four Value Add Basketball players, leaving off only No. 5 TJ Williams from little-known Northeastern.

If we form a first team, All-American team at midseason based on the top Value Add Basketball players in the country who are also listed as one of the top 25 players so far by the Wooden Award, then No. 6 Lauri Markkanen of Arizona replaces Williams as a first team All-American.

The rest of the first team, All-American squad today would include Villanova’s Josh Hart, who barely edges out Kansas’ Frank Mason III as the most valuable player this season, as well as Duke’s Luke Kennard and Iowa State’s Monte Morris.

The second team includes five more players from the Power 6 conferences, as the Wooden team does not typically identify the truly dominant players from smaller schools identified by Value Add even after discounting their accomplishments based on facing weaker defenses.

However, the consensus top player from outside the Power 6 is Alec Peters of Valparaiso, who is ranked No. 31 by Value Add and listed in the Top 25 by the Wooden Award (the Wooden Award does not put their top 25 in order).

Here are the All-American teams to date, followed by the other 10 players on the Wooden Watch list despite not measuring objectively in the top 50 of 4000 players based on Value Add.