NEWPORT NEWS, Va.—Three Atlantic 10 men’s basketball student-athletes have been selected to the Bob Cousy Point Guard of the Year Award Watch List by the the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Dayton’s Jalen Crutcher, Rhode Island’s Fatts Russell and Richmond’s Jacob Gilyard, all seniors, are among the 20 candidates for the award for the best point guard in the nation.
Crutcher, the starting point for the Flyers since his freshman season, is a preseason All-American (Second Team according to Stadium). Last year, Crutcher quarterbacked Dayton to a 29-2 overall record, a No. 3 national ranking in the final poll and a perfect 18-0 mark in winning the Atlantic 10 Conference Regular Season Championship in 2019-20. Last year, UD led Division I in field goal percentage (.525, 905-1725), was second in scoring margin (+15.5) and third in assists per game (17.6).
A three-year starter, Crutcher was First Team All-Atlantic 10 last year. Sports Illustrated ranked him 34th in its listing of the Top 50 players of the 2019-20 college basketball season. He was also First Team All-District 4 as voted on by the members of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. During the year, he became the first UD player to be named a back-to-back conference player of the week.
Crutcher led Dayton in minutes (33.7), assists (4.9) three-pointers (2.4 per game), 3-pt. FG% (.468, 147-314) and FT% (.869, 86-99), and was second in scoring (15.1). In Atlantic 10 Conference games, he was the only player in the top seven of the guard-oriented stat categories -- scoring (7th), assists (7th), 3-pt. FG's (5th), 3-pt % (4th), FT% (3rd) and A/T ratio (1st).
He is currently 36th in career scoring at UD with 1,170 points, and ninth with 470 career assists. Crutcher is third at UD in career assists per game (5.0) and second in assist-to-turnover ratio (2.18).
An All-America candidate heading into 2020-21, Russell has 1,255 career points, leaving him with 745 to become the second player in program history to reach 2,000. Carlton "Silk" Owens - who scored 2,114 points from 1984-88 - is the only current member of the 2,000-point club for Rhode Island.
Russell emerged as one of the nation's best players last season, leading the Rams and finishing third in the Atlantic 10 with 18.8 points per game. He also was second in the country with 2.87 steals per game, and his 86 steals were the second most in a single-season in program history. With 169 career steals entering 2020-21, Russell needs just 38 to tie Keith Cothran's program record of 207, set from 2006-10.
A First Team All-Atlantic 10 selection and a member of the league's All-Defensive Team as a junior, Russell was one of 30 players nationally named to the Citizen Naismith Trophy 2020 Midseason Team. He was one of just 15 players nationally named to the Naismith Trophy Midseason Defensive Player of the Year Team. Russell was the U.S. Basketball Writer's Association District I Player of the Year, as well as a member of the National Association of Basketball Coaches 2019-20 Division I All-District 4 First Team.
Gilyard led the Spiders to a 24-7 record last season while starting all 31 games and earning First Team All-Atlantic 10 honors. He led the nation with a school-record 99 steals en route to winning the A-10's Defensive Player of the Year Award and was one of 10 semifinalists for the Naismith National Defensive Player of the Year Award. On offense, Gilyard scored 12.7 points per game and averaged 5.7 assists, third most in the conference and 29th in the nation.
Gilyard enters his senior season with 276 career steals, most among active players, and has a chance to set the Division I record for career steals. Gilyard, who averaged 3.2 steals per game last season, needs 109 steals this season to match the record of 385 held by Providence's John Linehan, who played for the Friars from 1997 to 2002.
Gilyard is one of three Atlantic 10 point guards are on the Cousy Award watch list, with Dayton's Jalen Crutcher and Rhode Island's Fatts Russell also represented. The field for the Cousy Award will be narrowed down to 10 semifinalists in mid-February and halved to five finalists in March. The winner of the Cousy Award will be presented on April 9, 2021.
Atlantic 10 fans will have a chance to contribute to the voting process, with Starting Five Fan Voting presented by Dell Technologies to begin on Friday, Nov. 6. For more information on voting and the Cousy Award, log onto
www.hoophallawards.com and follow
@hoophall and
#CousyAward on Twitter and Instagram.
Named after Class of 1971 Hall of Famer and former Boston Celtic and Holy Cross guard Bob Cousy, the annual honor now in its 18th year recognizes the top point guards in Division I men's college basketball. A national committee of top college basketball personnel determined the watch list of 20 candidates.
Dayton, Rhode Island and Richmond athletics contributed portions of this story.