KNOXVILLE – Last season, Tennessee forward Grant Williams had some company at the top of the Southeastern Conference.
Tuesday, he stood alone.
The junior was named the SEC men’s basketball player of the year for the second consecutive season by The Associated Press as well as the league coaches, both released Tuesday.
Tennessee senior Admiral Schofield was a first-team selection by the coaches and a second-teamer in the AP poll, while junior point guard Jordan Bone earned second-team recognition in both.
Ole Miss’s Kermit Davis was voted coach of the year after guiding the Rebels to a 20-11 season in his first year at Oxford.
Kentucky freshman Tyler Herro was named newcomer of the year by the AP, while teammate Keldon Johnson received that honor from the coaches. Herro averaged 14.2 points and made a team-high 53 3-point baskets, while Johnson averaged 13.7 points and shot 39 percent from 3-point range.
Williams, who shared the top-player award last season with Georgia’s Yante Maten, was the only unanimous selection on this year’s All-SEC first team. He became the first man to win consecutive player of the year honors since Arkansas’s Corliss Williamson in 1994 and 1995.
The 6-foot-7 Williams had 14 20-point performances and seven double-doubles in the regular season. He averaged 19.3 points, 7.7 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game for the 27-4 Volunteers, ranking in the SEC’s top 11 in all three categories. He shot 53 percent from the field and 83 percent from the free-throw line. Last season he averaged 15.2 points, 6.0 rebounds and 1.9 assists as the first AP SEC player of the year from Tennessee since Chris Lofton in 2007.
Schofield was second on the Vols in scoring at 16.3 points per game while making a team-high 59 3s at a 40-percent rate. His biggest one was from the top of the key with six seconds remaining that broke a 72-all tie and led to a three-point victory over top-ranked Gonzaga on Dec. 9 in Phoenix. He also averaged 6.3 rebounds per contest.
Bone averaged 13.4 points and 6.1 assists per game with a 3-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio.
Williams was joined on the AP first team by Arkansas forward Daniel Gafford, Kentucky forward P.J. Washington, LSU guard Tremont Waters and Mississippi State guard Quinndary Weatherspoon, while Auburn guard Jared Harper, Ole Miss guard Breein Tyson and South Carolina forward Chris Silva also made second team.
On the coaches’ first team, Williams and Schofield were joined by Gafford, Washington, Waters, Tyree, Weatherspoon and Silva. Bone, Harper, Herro, Johnson, Auburn’s Bryce Brown, Georgia’s Nicolas Claxton, LSU’s Skylar Mays and Ole Miss’s Terence Davis were the second tier.
Waters and Kentucky’s Ashton Hagans were named co-defensive players of the year, while South Carolina’s Hassani Gravett was named sixth man of the year.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.