Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine: Player of the Year Candidate

It’s early August and the stories are a bit thin in the college basketball realm. Some teams are taking foreign tours, others are trying to find their final recruits to fill out the roster and others are just waiting for their chance to get back out on the court.

Despite this, there has been a lot of basketball played. Kansas and a few players from other programs won gold in the World University Games and a number of top collegiate players participated in the Pan American games, helping Team USA claim the bronze medal.

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One of those college players on the bronze medal team was Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine, the Spartans’ top returning player for the 2015-16 season.

Seeing action in all five tournament games, Valentine was one of the college players that wasn’t able to see the floor as much as he had hoped, averaging just 11.4 minutes per game throughout the tournament. However, he was productive in that short amount of time, averaging 7.4 points, 2.4 rebounds and shooting 38 percent from three.

He was one of the more impressive college players on the team and that experience should do wonders for him going forward.

One of the big conversations throughout the summer has been who’s in the running for National Player of the Year on the college level. Once he announced his return to school, Providence’s Kris Dunn became the media and fan favorite to claim the crown. As NBCSports.com’s Rob Dauster puts in this in-depth piece, Dunn has been working on correcting his flaws to make that a reality.

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Outside of Dunn, the conversation has been focused around a few other guards, namely North Carolina’s Marcus Paige and Maryland’s Melo Trimble, the leading men for the programs expected to be jostling for that preseason No.1 rankings.

However, despite Trimble being in discussion for NPOY, it’s his conference opponent Valentine that should be getting the headlines.

Michigan State’s Final Four run recaptured the attention of the nation, prompting many to put the Spartans as a top 10 team in their respective Way Too Early Top 25s for the 2015-16 season. Some have lessened the expectations of the team a bit, but still see Tom Izzo’s squad challenging for another Big Ten championship.

The biggest reason why these expectations are reasonable is because of Valentine, who’s the top returning scorer, rebounder, assist man, steal getting, three-point chucker, free throw shooter — you get the idea — for Michigan State.

In short, Valentine does a little bit of everything, including knocking down game-winning threes on the holiday that resembles his name.

One of the most versatile offensive players and one of the best pure wing defenders in the country, Valentine should be getting more consideration for NPOY than he has, which is none to this point.

I haven’t released my POY rankings yet — those will come closer to the season — but our own Michael Whitlow for Hoops Habit gave his projections for First Team All-Americans and Valentine was nowhere to be found (Dunn and Trimble were also not listed, to be fair).

This conversation won’t heat up until we get closer to the season, but let me be the first to say that Valentine should get much more consideration than he has gotten thus far.

Valentine’s numbers (14.5 points, 6.3 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 41.6% 3FG) are incredibly impressive. Just how impressive were they?

He was the only player to total 550 points, 240 rebounds, 150 assists and at least 30 steals, according to Basketball Reference.

Even more impressive than that? Here’s the entire list of players that have had that stat line since the 1996-97 season:

Provided by Sports-Reference.com/CBB: View Original Table
Generated 8/4/2015.

As you can see, there’s very few players in the last 20 years or so that have been able to do the things Valentine did on the court last year. It’s a remarkable stat line, and considering he was considered to the be third or fourth option for much of the season, his output puts him in an incredibly narrow field of company.

Now, it does seem difficult to repeat that sort of stat line again as nobody has done it twice in that time, but he’s also only the second of these five players to get a chance to duplicate it. Jamont Gordon came 16 total rebounds short of doing it twice.

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As we get closer to the start of the 2015-16 college season, Valentine should get some more acknowledgement for what he’s capable of doing this year. It will be a bit difficult to duplicate that success, but anything close to that should be enough to get him first team All-American status come March as well as POY consideration.

With Travis Trice and Branden Dawson no longer with the Spartans, the attention will be focused a bit more on Valentine, which adds to the difficulty of duplicating those numbers. Although, only six other players can say they had the same type of competition this summer during the PanAm games.

He was going against pros throughout that tournament and that will give him an advantage going into this season.

Maybe it’s better to fly under the radar a bit in these types of categories as it eases the preseason hype, but if there’s only player who should get some more consideration that it seems he’ll get come October, it’s Valentine.

Michigan State has a solid team but their potential success will be determined by the play of Valentine. If he can continue the production he had last season, look out for the Spartans.

Next: NCAA: Best, Worst Road Records In Last 10 Years

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