Dereck Lively The Latest Blue Devil Nominated For A National Award

Even thought it’s not a big deal (yet), this is nice: Duke now has five players nominated for national awards:

• Dereck Lively has been named to the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award Watch List
• Kyle Filipowski has been named to the Karl Malone Award Watch List
• Dariq Whithead has been named to the Julius Erving Award Watch List
• Tyrese Proctor has been named to the Jerry West Award Watch List
• Jeremy Roach has been named to the Bob Cousy Award Watch List

However, we kind of stopped making a big deal about these things. Why?

Not because it’s anyone’s fault - you can’t help your age and how the game has changed - but four of the five haven't played a minute of college basketball.

They’re all talented players, but it’s just a bit much to nominate most freshmen for a major national award.

That’s not to say that they can’t win it. But really, the nominees should be nominated based on their accomplishments, not their potential.

It’s possible all the awards do this - we wouldn’t know - but we hope they all look carefully later in the season and see who might have been overlooked and add them to the list. It just seems more fair.