Wisconsin basketball: D’Mitrik Trice tabbed as one of nation’s best point guards

On Monday, Wisconsin Badgers senior point guard D’Mitrik Trice was named to the preseason watch list for the Bob Cousy Award, given annually since 2004 to the best point guard in the country.

The official website for the award notes: “A Basketball Hall of Famer since 1971, Mr. Cousy wanted to continue both his legacy and ensure that the best point guards in the collegiate game are appropriately recognized. Since 2004, the Cousy Award has both recognized some of the games’ best players and students.”

Trice is a three time Academic All-Big Ten member and was named Third-Team All-Big Ten last season for the regular season B1G champion Badgers. He had a career-year in 2019-20 setting new record-highs (for regular season stats only) in points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals while starting at point guard in all 31 games. He averaged 9.8 ppg, 4.2 apg and 4 rpg while shooting 37.6% from beyond the arc. Trice became the 44th Badgers player to break the 1,000 point mark last year as well.

As far as other B1G players on the watch list, we’ve got Ayo Dosunmu of Illinois and Geo Baker of Rutgers. Marcus Carr of Minnesota is a curious omission, but if he plays as well as he did last year he should be added to the midseason watch list. Nationally, highly touted freshman Cade Cunningham of Oklahoma State made the list as well as Marcus Zegarowski of Creighton, Kihei Clark of Virginia and Scottie Barnes of Florida State.

Last year’s winner was Payton Pritchard of Oregon, while Ja Morant of Murray State won the year before that. The last Big Ten player to win the award was Trey Burke back in 2013.