City of Basketball Love

Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich)
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It’s award watch list season in college basketball, and a few Big 5 players are getting their names mentioned on a national stage.

Villanova’s Ryan Arcidiacono and Jalen Brunson were both named to the Bob Cousy Award watch list, an honor presented annually to the nation’s top point guard. St. Joseph’s DeAndre Bembry was also named to an award watch list, the one for the Julius Erving Small Forward of the Year award, which is handed out by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Arcidiacono and Brunson are the only pair of teammates on the Cousy watch list among the 20 early candidates for the honor. Arcidiacono, a senior, is the reigning Big East co-Player of the Year after helping lead the Wildcats to a 33-3 record last season and serving as the catalyst of an offense that scored 76.3 points per game. The Langhorne native averaged 10.1 points and 3.6 assists per contest.

Brunson makes the list as a highly recruited freshman that has yet to officially play in a Villanova uniform. The bar has been set high for Brunson, who was a McDonald’s All-American and tabbed as the 16th-best player in the 2015 class by ESPN, and the people behind the Cousy Award also expect him to be a major contributor right away.

For Bembry, it will be another season of doing a lot of everything for the Hawks. One of the top NBA prospects in the city, the 6-foot-6 Bembry averaged 17.7 points, 7.7 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.9 steals per game last season – leading the team in each category.

While no other current Philadelphia college players join Bembry on the Erving watch list, Damion Lee was one of the other 19 players mentioned for the honor. Lee will be playing at Louisville this season after transferring from Drexel.