Latest 2024-25 College Basketball National Player of the Year Rankings0 of 11
Cooper FlaggM. Anthony Nesmith/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
At our last check on the race for the John R. Wooden Award two weeks ago, former front-runner Johni Broome was out indefinitely with an ankle sprain, while new front-runner Cooper Flagg was fresh off a 42-point explosion and running away with what would be just the fourth-ever instance of a freshman being named National Player of the Year.
Now that Broome has returned for Auburn, though, is the race heating back up? Or is Flagg still well on his way to joining Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis and Zion Williamson in the history books?
And what of the incredible play of the likes of Braden Smith, Kam Jones and PJ Haggerty? Could those lead guards still sneak into what has been a two-big-man race for a while?
We’ll rank the top 10 candidates as we currently see the field, plus a dozen honorable mentions who narrowly missed the cut.
One crucial thing to keep in mind when it comes to National Player of the Year candidates is that team success is a major component of the criteria for consideration. Specifically, the Wooden Award winner almost always comes from a team that earns a No. 4 seed or better in the NCAA tournament.
As such, you’re going to encounter a few honorable mentions who are putting up incredible numbers on teams going nowhere fast.
Statistics current through the start of play on Wednesday, Jan. 29.
12 Words on Each of 12 Honorable Mentions1 of 11
Louisville’s Chucky HepburnMichael Hickey/Getty Images
Ace Bailey, Rutgers: With Dylan Harper limited, Bailey has continued thriving as a one-man show.
Lamont Butler, Kentucky: Veteran leader of a contender with as many great wins as anyone.
Walter Clayton Jr., Florida: May well catapult into top five with gem at Tennessee this Saturday.
Eric Dixon, Villanova: Still scoring in bunches, but Villanova’s nine losses are holding him back.
Chucky Hepburn, Louisville: Averaging 15 points and eight dimes during Louisville’s defining 10-game winning streak.
Kasparas Jakucionis, Illinois: Honestly, it’s hard to believe he hasn’t recorded a single triple-double yet.
Tre Johnson, Texas: 30-point effort against Texas A&M was a legendary performance from bucket-getting freshman.
Ryan Kalkbrenner, Creighton: Bluejays center has been both unstoppable and impenetrable since just before Christmas.
Caleb Love, Arizona: 60-foot heave against Iowa State instantly put Love back in All-Americans mix.
Maxime Raynaud, Stanford: Almost singlehandedly willing the Cardinal to the bubble with his 16 double-doubles.
Javon Small, West Virginia: Upstart Mountaineers’ do-it-all point guard is averaging roughly 20, five and five.
Zakai Zeigler, Tennessee: Veteran leader on both ends supplants Chaz Lanier as Tennessee’s NPOY candidate.
10. Joseph Tugler, Houston2 of 11
Candice Ward/Getty Images
Season Stats: 5.8 PPG, 5.6 RPG, 2.5 BPG, 0.9 SPG, 0.9 APG
A tip of the cap to Evan Miyakawa for Joseph Tugler’s spot on the list.
He tweeted his Bayesian Performance Rating rankings on Jan. 17, in which Tugler was ranked fourth in the nation behind only Johni Broome, Cooper Flagg and Kam Jones. And since then, Tugler has moved ahead of Jones, up to No. 3.
Of course, the problem in trying to convince anyone he is a top 10 player is the lack of scoring.
Even accounting for the fact that he only plays 21 minutes per game, 11.0 points per 40 minutes would be shockingly low for a consensus All-American.
What Tugler does bring to the table, though, is elite defense, to the point where he is clearly the most valuable defender on what is probably the best defense in the nation.
He presently has an 80.5 defensive rating, per Sports Reference. No. 2 in that department is Flagg at 85.1. Even Anthony Davis merely ended up at 80.7 in 2012.
Tugler is also a certified force on the offensive glass, averaging 5.5 offensive rebounds per 40 minutes. Putbacks of those offensive boards account for a significant chunk of the few shots he takes.
But if you don’t like Tugler, feel free to slot your preferred Cougar here.
It might be Emanuel Sharp, Milos Uzan, J’Wan Roberts or LJ Cryer, but could we reach a consensus before the next Wooden Watch update? Because it’s kind of absurd that no one from this excellent team made the cut for the midseason top 25.
9. Graham Ike, Gonzaga3 of 11
Soobum Im/Getty Images
Season Stats: 17.3 PPG, 7.2 RPG, 1.5 APG, 41% 3PT
Like Tugler, Graham Ike is only playing about 21 minutes per game.
But he’s scoring a bit more than Tugler. In fact, he is averaging 32.2 points per 40 minutes, which is slightly ludicrous.
Zach Edey last year? He averaged 31.5 points per 40 minutes. And he was lower than that in each of his previous seasons.
Doug McDermott’s season year, he averaged 31.6.
Jimmer Fredette’s senior year was ever so slightly ahead of Ike at 32.3 points per 40, and let’s just say Ike doesn’t possess Jimmer Range, making that virtual tie unbelievable.
Throw in his impact on the glass and he has been some kind of special for Gonzaga, going for 23 and nine (in 20 minutes) against San Diego State, 28 and 11 against Kentucky and 24 and eight against UCLA.
If he hadn’t been a total non/negative factor in the loss to Connecticut—12 minutes, three points, zero rebounds, four turnovers, four fouls—he would probably be a much stronger candidate here than he has been.
Up next for Ike and the Zags is the big road game against Saint Mary’s. He went for 24 and 10 in the game in Moraga, California last season, and a similar performance in a win that vaults Gonzaga back into the AP Top 25 could be just what the doctor ordered.
8. Mark Sears, Alabama4 of 11
Joe Buvid/Getty Images
Season Stats: 18.1 PPG, 4.9 APG, 2.9 RPG, 1.1 SPG, 35% 3PT
Has a first- or second-team All-American ever been held scoreless twice in that season?
If not, Mark Sears is probably going to be the founding member of that club, as he was shut out in Alabama’s win over Illinois in November as well as its victory over LSU last Saturday.
Of course, those performances were very much the exception to the rule, with Sears scoring at least 20 points in 11 of the 14 games in between those doughnuts and at least 11 points in every game aside from those two.
Alabama is leading the nation in scoring at 90.3 points per game, and he has been the driving force of that offense, entering Wednesday’s game against Mississippi State with 110 more points and 24 more assists than his closest teammate in each category.
Sears hasn’t been nearly as efficient as he was last year, though, shooting 39.6 percent from the field compared to his 2023-24 mark of 50.8 percent. It’s why the preseason front-runner for NPOY is barely still in the conversation here outside of the top five, even though the Crimson Tide as a whole have been every bit the championship contender we expected them to be.
Don’t sleep on Sears making a valiant late charge in this race, though.
Alabama hosts Auburn on Feb. 15 and Kentucky one week after that, then closes out the regular season with three straight against Tennessee, Florida and Auburn.
Certainly an opportunity for Sears to make a lot of noise down the stretch, if Alabama plays its way up to the No. 1 overall seed.
7. Hunter Dickinson, Kansas5 of 11
Matthew Visinsky/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Season Stats: 16.3 PPG, 9.9 RPG, 2.3 APG, 1.4 BPG, 1.2 SPG
As is the case for Sears, Hunter Dickinson recently eclipsed 2,500 career points, with both players roughly on track to finish the year top 25 on the all-time leaderboard.
(Sure, it took them five seasons to likely still finish behind what Larry Bird did in three years, but they’ve been the highest scoring of the current class).
As is also the case with Sears, Dickinson was a consensus second-team All-American last season whose overall impact while on the court this year isn’t markedly better.
The Kansas star has been slightly more efficient compared to Sears being drastically less efficient, but not any sort of big leap that could push him over the hump, so to speak.
However, he still absolutely belongs in the conversation, averaging 20.5 points over his last four games, and willing the Dajuan Harris-less Jayhawks to that come-from-behind victory over UCF on Tuesday with 24 points.
Shame he completely vanished toward the end of the previous game against Houston, though. Between the final eight minutes of regulation and both overtimes, Dickinson had three points and one rebound while getting hopelessly outplayed by J’Wan Roberts in the paint.
That was a major opportunity for him to make a statement in this race, which, unfortunately for his case, he probably did.
6. Curtis Jones, Iowa State6 of 11
Bruce Yeung/Getty Images
Season Stats: 18.1 PPG, 4.6 RPG, 2.4 APG, 1.5 SPG, 38% 3PT
Curtis Jones had a tough night in the overtime loss at Arizona on Monday. He shot just 1-for-11 from the field and committed the back-to-back turnovers in overtime that allowed the Wildcats to turn a tie game into a nine-point lead in the span of barely a minute.
That kept him from launching all the way into our top five.
But he did finally bypass teammate Keshon Gilbert as Iowa State’s top candidate for NPOY, with Jones averaging 20.7 points, 5.1 rebounds and 1.9 steals in Big 12 play to Gilbert’s 14.3, 4.3 and 1.6, respectively.
Jones had already scored at least 19 points in seven of his first 11 games of the season, so it’s not like he was hopelessly behind Gilbert prior to the start of league play. But he’s found another gear as of late, going for 23 against Utah, 26 at Texas Tech, and 25 against Kansas in three consecutive wins.
The final push came in the win over Arizona State, though. At halftime, he had scored 18 of the team’s 33 points, keeping the Cyclones in that game almost by himself. He finished with a career-high 33 points as they eventually pulled away to maintain their grip on a projected No. 1 seed.
Two colossal opportunities remain for Jones to really impress the NPOY voters: at Kansas this Monday and at Houston on Feb. 22. Another 30-point effort in either of those games would go a long way.
5. PJ Haggerty, Memphis7 of 11
Justin Ford/Getty Images
Season Stats: 22.1 PPG, 5.7 RPG, 3.5 APG, 2.2 SPG, 43% 3PT
For the most part, PJ Haggerty is the same player he was one year ago at Tulsa, when we consistently had him in the top five of our National Freshman of the Year rankings.
He is nothing short of elite at getting to the free-throw line, but he’s also stuffing the stat sheet with 10-11 combined rebounds, assists and steals on a nightly basis for a second consecutive year.
There are two major differences, though; the first being that he plays for a good team now, with Memphis looking good for around a No. 5 seed at this point.
It’s not Haggerty’s fault Tulsa went 16-15 last season, but it is definitely the fault of Tulsa’s mediocrity that he received little national attention and never had a real shot at being named National Freshman of the Year. Had he averaged 21.2, 5.5, 3.8 and 1.9 for a team worth a darn, he almost certainly edges out Reed Sheppard for the Wayman Tisdale Award.
The second big difference is that Haggerty is a drastically better perimeter weapon, improving from 29 percent on 2.5 three-point attempts per game to 43 percent on 3.1 attempts per game.
Now he’s the total package. And during his current six-game streak of KenPom game MVPs, he’s shooting 57 percent from the field and 47 percent from distance.
Better yet, he’s up to second in the nation in scoring average at 22.1 points per game. Granted, it’s a distant second behind Eric Dixon at 24.6, but Haggerty has scored at least 17 points in 10 consecutive games, dominating in AAC play just as he did last year.
It’s unfortunate there are no games left on Memphis’ schedule that particularly matter (unless they results in losses). But if Haggerty continues to excel and the Tigers go 11-0 the rest of the way to maybe play their way up to a No. 2 seed, his NPOY case could get interesting.
4. Kam Jones, Marquette8 of 11
Kayla Wolf/Getty Images
Season Stats: 18.9 PPG, 6.3 APG, 4.6 RPG, 1.6 SPG, 33% 3PT
Two weeks into the campaign, Kam Jones was an early favorite for NPOY, punctuated by his triple-double in a convincing victory over Purdue.
And though he has scored at least 10 points in every game this season while Marquette has blossomed into a strong candidate for a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament, both he and the Golden Eagles have been the sort of forgotten-about excellent candidate.
That could change in a big way in the next 10 days.
Marquette has not yet faced Connecticut or St. John’s this season, but it is about to host the national champions before back-to-back road games against the Red Storm and the Bluejays of Creighton.
If Jones merely continues to do his thing while the Golden Eagles win all three games, they become a nearly indisputable candidate for a No. 1 seed and he maybe climbs to No. 3 or even No. 2 in this ranking.
But if he goes off for another triple-double or a few more gems like his 32-6-4 game against Wisconsin or his 22-9-5 effort in the first game against Creighton, that’s going to generate a heck of a lot of buzz for a veteran star who is already putting up slightly absurd numbers.
3. Braden Smith, Purdue9 of 11
Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Season Stats: 15.4 PPG, 8.9 APG, 4.8 RPG, 2.4 SPG, 39% 3PT
Under normal circumstances, Braden Smith would probably be running away with National Player of the Year.
The last three point guards to win it were Jalen Brunson in 2018, Frank Mason III in 2017 and Trey Burke in 2013. And while those three each did more of their own scoring than Smith typically does, he has left them in the dust elsewhere in the box score.
The combined per-game averages for Brunson, Mason and Burke were 19.5 PPG, 5.5 APG, 3.5 RPG and 1.3 SPG, so we’re talking 3.4 assists, 1.3 rebounds and 1.1 steals per game that Smith has been better than the last three Wooden Award-winning lead guards.
Hilariously, that’s after a (by his standards) slow start to the year, too.
Over his last nine games, Smith is at 18.7 PPG, 9.7 APG, 4.9 RPG and 2.8 SPG for a team that has won eight of those nine games, playing its way back to the fringe of the No. 1 seed conversation despite now existing in its post-Zach Edey era.
He has been nothing short of sensational for the Boilermakers, leading the Big Ten in both assists and steals, turning what is a glorified three-man team into a legitimate threat to win a national championship.
Unfortunately for Smith, it’s not a normal year. He’s a shoo-in for first-team All-American as things stand, but he’s also nowhere close to the top candidate for NPOY.
2. Johni Broome, Auburn10 of 11
Stew Milne/Getty Images
Season Stats: 17.8 PPG, 10.9 RPG, 3.2 APG, 2.8 BPG, 29% 3PT
Cooper Flagg is at No. 1, as the betting markets pretty well mandate that be the case.
And for an award that is ultimately a popularity contest more than it is a ranking of statistical greatness, the fact that Flagg is approaching Zion Williamson levels of “we can’t help but talk about him even on nights when he isn’t playing” hype, it’s hard to argue with the betting markets.
But Johni Broome is still in this race, and I’ll give you one number why: 62.2.
Many moons ago when I started doing these NPOY rankings, I came up with a stat dubbed PRABS/40 as a means of identifying the best stat-sheet stuffers. It’s the sum of a player’s points, rebounds times 1.25, assists times 1.5, steals times two and blocks times two, divided by minutes played and multiplied by 40.
Don’t sweat over the math. Just know that most players with any real hope of making an All-American team end up with a PRABS/40 somewhere in the 40-45 range, while the elite impact players land north of 50.
Flagg is at 52.0. 2022-23 Zach Edey tallied a 57.3, before 2023-24 Edey registered a 60.4.
However, heading into Wednesday night’s game at LSU, Broome was sitting at a preposterous 62.2.
Broome also entered the day leading the nation in box plus/minus with a mark of 17.4. Flagg was No. 2 at 15.6.
Simply put, on a per-minute basis, Broome is practically off the charts.
The problem, of course, is that he missed two games, had two other games in which he left early with an injury and typically doesn’t play quite as many minutes per game as Flagg anyway, resulting in the freshman playing about 30 percent more minutes to this point in the season.
If Broome and Auburn continue to dominate, though, this race could get mighty interesting down the stretch.
1. Cooper Flagg, Duke11 of 11
M. Anthony Nesmith/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Season Stats: 19.9 PPG, 8.0 RPG, 4.1 APG, 1.5 SPG, 1.2 BPG, 33% 3PT
While I do legitimately believe Broome still has a tangible chance to win the Wooden Award, he probably is going to need some help in the form of Flagg hitting the proverbial freshman wall in February.
Because goodness knows he didn’t hit it in January.
Flagg has scored at least 24 points in six of his last eight games, averaging 25.3 dating back to New Year’s Eve.
That’s on 13.6 field-goal attempts per game, let’s be sure to add. That’s a rate of 1.86 points per field-goal attempt, compared to what was a 1.19 mark through his first 10 games—when he was already clearly very good but still finding his legs.
Yes, he’s averaging 8.6 free-throw attempts in his last eight games, but he’s hardly getting any sort of superstar treatment. In fact, it might be fun to ask Mason Gillis whether Flagg or his former teammate at Purdue, Zach Edey, gets deliberately hacked on a more regular basis.
Even if you take out the free throws, Flagg has been wildly efficient, shooting 65 percent from inside the arc and 44 percent beyond it during this dominant stretch.
Oh, he’s also averaging 7.0 rebounds, 5.0 assists, 1.4 steals and 1.1 blocks in his last eight games, leading Duke in all five categories for the year. (Though Khaman Maluach is only one block behind him, as well as one on-court projectile vomit ahead of him.)
Flagg has also been the KenPom game MVP in 10 of the last 13 contests for what might be the best team in the country.
Buckle up for his first game against North Carolina on Saturday. Here’s hoping his shoes hold up better than Zion Williamson’s did when he first faced the Tar Heels.
