Kentucky sophomore point guard Tyler Ulis added to his growing list of accolades on Monday night with his selection to the John R. Wooden Award All-America Team. In addition to being named to the All-America Team, Ulis is one of the top five finalists for the Wooden Award, which goes to the nation’s top player.
Having tabulated enough votes to be among the final five finalists, Ulis is eligible for the Wooden Award. The award was created in 1976 and is bestowed upon the nation’s best player at an institution of higher education who has proven to his or her university that he or she is making progress toward graduation while maintaining a minimum cumulative 2.0 GPA. The unique Wooden Award trophy is presented to a man and woman each year. Previous winners include such notables as Larry Bird (‘79), Michael Jordan (‘84), Tim Duncan (‘97), Candace Parker (‘07 and ‘08), Kevin Durant (‘09), Maya Moore (‘09 and ‘11), Trey Burke (‘13) and Doug McDermott (‘14).
The 40th annual presentation of the John R. Wooden Award will be the anchor presentation of the ESPN College Basketball Awards Show on ESPN2 on April 8 at 8 p.m. Ulis and other members of the men’s and women’s John R. Wooden Award All-American Teams will be honored during the ceremony, and the 2016 Wooden Award Legends of Coaching Trophy will be presented to former Kentucky coach Tubby Smith.
The Chicago native was tabbed to the Wooden Award All-America Team alongside Grayson Allen (Duke) Malcolm Brogdon (Virginia), Kris Dunn (Providence), Perry Ellis (Kansas), Yogi Ferrell (Indiana), Buddy Hield (Oklahoma), Brice Johnson (North Carolina), Georges Niang (Iowa State) and Denzel Valentine (Michigan State). The top five vote-getters who are the remaining candidates for the nation’s player of the year honor include Ulis, Brogdon, Hield, Johnson and Valentine.
Ulis is the fifth Wildcat to be named a Wooden Award All-American since the inception of the team in 2007. He joins Willie Cauley-Stein (2015), Anthony Davis (2012), DeMarcus Cousins (2010) and John Wall (2010) as other UK players to earn the distinction.
Ulis posted one of the greatest all-time individual seasons for a point guard in school history while leading the Wildcats to a share of the Southeastern Conference regular-season championship, the SEC Tournament title and a 27-9 overall record in 2015-16.
En route to becoming one of the nation’s elite players, Ulis ended the season with 246 assists, setting the new single-season school record previously held by Wall. Until the season’s final game, Ulis had a streak of 28 consecutive games with four or more assists, the longest streak in school history since at least 1972-73.
Epps honorable mention All-American
The Associated Press announced Monday that University of Kentucky junior guard Makayla Epps has been named an honorable mention All-America selection after averaging 17.1 points with 4.5 assists and 4.8 rebounds per game this season.
It marks the second straight year Epps has earned honorable mention All-America honors from the organization. This is the seventh straight year that Kentucky has had a player honored by the AP nationally with Victoria Dunlap earning recognition in 2010 and 2011, before A’dia Mathies was honored in 2012 and 2013. Jen O’Neil was named honorable mention in 2014 before Epps’ honors the last two seasons.
Epps has a lengthy list of honors this season, including becoming the fourth player in program history to earn multiple SEC All-Tournament Team honors and becoming only the third player in the Matthew Mitchell era to be named first-team All-SEC multiple seasons. Most recently, Epps was named to the Women’s Basketball Coaches Associated All-Region team, which made her one of 52 candidates for the WBCA All-America Team. A first-team All-American by CollegeSportsMadness.com, Epps was named to the 30-member Wade Trophy Watch List, was a member of the Naismith Trophy Women’s College Player of the Year Midseason 30 Watch List and Dawn Staley Award Midseason Watch List. The junior was the espnW National Player of the Week and SEC Player of the Week on Dec. 14 for her strong outings against Louisville and Middle Tennessee State.
On the season, Epps played in 32 games, averaging a team-best 17.1 points per game, hitting .473 from the field with 4.5 assists per game and 4.8 rebounds per game. Epps scored 20-plus points 12 times, while scoring in double digits 29 times. Early in the season, Epps posted the second triple-double in program history with 21 points, 12 assists and 11 rebounds against Morehead State. During SEC play, Epps became the 31st member of Kentucky’s 1,000 point club and ended her junior year with 1,207 career points, which ranks her 19th all-time on Kentucky’s scoring list.
The star shone the most on the biggest of stages this season. During the regular season against highly-ranked Louisville, Duke, South Carolina (twice), Tennessee, Mississippi State and Texas A&M, Epps averaged 18.4 points per game, hitting .486 from the field with 29 assists and 33 rebounds. Those performances continued in the SEC Tournament as Epps led the team averaging 18.3 points per game with 5.3 rebounds per game, 12 assists and an impressive .553 clip from the field.
She paced the team in the NCAA Tournament, averaging 22.3 points per game to go with 4.3 assists per game and 5.0 rebounds per game. The junior increased her output not only in points per game, but efficiency from 3 as well as it increased to .438 in the tournament compared to shooting at a .250 prior to the event. Additionally, Epps ended her junior campaign with 546 points and 143 assists, becoming the only player in school history to have at least 500 points and 100 assists in two consecutive seasons.
From UK Athletics