No, not ACC Player of the Year. National Player of the Year.
Now you may be saying to yourself, "Way to go out on the limb Jay. Picking the Preseason Player of the Year in the best conference in basketball to win National Player of the Year. Big Whoop." But if you think C.J. Fair is getting even a sniff of the Player of the Year conversation, you're sadly mistaken. Consider this...
While perusing 3 prominent national preseason magazines at Wegmans the other day, here was where C.J. Fair was ranked:
First Magazine - Third Team All-American
Second Magazine - Not Ranked (Three Teams listed)
Third Magazine - Not Ranked (Two Teams listed, plus 11 honorable mentions)
That means according to these magazines, C.J. Fair is anywhere between the 11th best player and outside the top 21 in terms of best college basketball players for the coming season.
I couldn't believe my eyes so I did a little further research on the interwebs when I got home on (because everything you read on the internet is true), only to find more of the same story. He only made third team All-American at USA Today and Sporting News. CBS Sports didn't even have him on their three teams and ranked him #17 in their top 100 list.
(Then again, I have a hard time putting too much stock in a top 100 that doesn't include Jerami Grant. When you project Grant as a lottery pick next year - as I have seen on CBS Sports multiple times in the past few months - he has to make your top 100 list. So the quality of this list is dubious at best. But I digress...)
The point is, for being the best returning player on a team that went to the Final Four last year, he is not getting nearly his fair share of the hype when it comes to the national scene. I think he has a legitimate shot to be a first team All-American this season and is even a dark-horse candidate to take home the hardware for best college player. Here is why...
1) You need to put up big statistics
Check.
I can't envision any scenario where C.J. Fair winds up averaging less than 17 points per game and 7 rebounds per game this season. It's not totally far-fetched to assume that it might be more like 20 and 10.
Look at this improvement he's exhibited in each of his 3 seasons so far.
Points: 6.4 -> 8.5 -> 14.5
Rebounds: 3.8 -> 5.4 -> 7.0
He's spent another off-season dedicated to polishing his developing 3-point shot. He's aggressively looking to score in the preseason and talking about how he's excited to be the man and have the offense run through him.
He has never fouled out of a game in his career and has reached 4 fouls only twice in 3 years, so you don't have to worry about him missing long stretches of games. He's about as money in the bank for 30+ minutes a night as there is.
Put it all together and you have the recipe for a player who's a shoo-in to put up some impressive statistics this season.
2) You need to be the clear best player on a good team
Check.
The nice thing for C.J. Fair is that Syracuse is almost a sure thing to be a top 10 program throughout the year and there is almost no one who has a realistic shot to compete with him as the best player on the team (maybe with the exception of Jerami Grant, maaaaayyyybe).
There's not many other players that can say that. Look around the landscape of College Basketball and the preseason top 10.
Andrew Wiggins is the future #1 pick, but is he going to assert himself enough to clearly distinguish himself from future lottery picks Joel Embiid and Wayne Selden?
If you think Kansas has a load of talented freshmen, how about the group Julius Randle has to compete with at Kentucky. They have 7 or 8 players who could be first round picks over the next 2 years. He may not even be the best player on his team, yet alone in the country.
Jabari Parker might be the best player in the country, or he might not even be the best forward on his team, as Rodney Hood made the preseason all-conference team in the ACC as well.
C.J. Fair is in the rare position of being THE top dog on a top 10 team, without much room for argument.
3) You need to have lots of big-time games so you get enough exposure
Check.
3 games in Maui in November, including a possible top 15 tilt with Gonzaga in the title game.
A sweet sixteen rematch with Indiana in the ACC / Big Ten Challenge
A February home game against Duke on the College Gameday slate
And those are just the games that will likely be considered the biggest game of that day. Throw in another dozen or so games that will likely be nationally televised, and the voters will have no shortage of opportunities to see C.J. Fair play this season.
4) You need to make highlight plays that will get people talking
Check
Check
Check
Check
Pretty self-explanatory.
5) You need to build hype at some point in the season
This is the one category that is tough for C.J. Fair. Marcus Smart and Doug McDermott got all the attention for returning to school despite being All-Americans last year. Andrew Wiggins, Julius Randle, and Jabari Parker get all the hype as part of potentially the best recruiting class in history. C.J. Fair gets none of the hype (as detailed above).
So he's got a lot of ground to make up.
But working in his favor is people's love for taking contrarian positions. If Syracuse is having a top 10 season and C.J. Fair is the prime reason for it, but isn't getting any love heading into that February 1st battle with Duke, you better believe people will be falling all over themselves to be the first to write the "C.J. Fair is the most underrated player in college basketball" article before that game.
So there you have it folks, my case for C.J. Fair as the National Player of the Year this season.
Is it a long shot? Maybe
Is it impossible? I certainly don't think so, and if you do why don't you tell him yourself. I'm sure he'll have something to say about it.
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