• 2013-14 All-OVC Men's Basketball Team (PDF)
BRENTWOOD, Tenn. - After leading Belmont to its second-straight Ohio Valley Conference regular season championship, Belmont senior guard
J.J. Mann was named OVC Player of the Year while his coach
Rick Byrd was tabbed OVC Coach of the Year in voting by league head coaches and sports information directors. In additional voting Murray State guard
Cameron Payne was named OVC Freshman of the Year while Eastern Kentucky junior
Corey Walden was selected as the OVC Defensive Player of the Year.
Mann entered this season having played in 103 career games, including starting all 33 games in the team's 2012-13 OVC Championship season, but had never averaged more than 10.5 points/game as he was a role player on three-straight NCAA Tournament teams. This year, however, after the team graduated three starters Mann took over the leadership role and ranked first in the OVC in steals (2.1/game), second in free throw percentage (86.9%), third in 3-pointers made/game (2.4) and fifth in scoring (18.4 points/game). He made a splash on the national stage just four games into the season when he led the Bruins to an 83-80 upset at No. 11 North Carolina. Mann scored a then career-high 28 points in that game, including three 3-pointers in the final 1:02 as Belmont topped its first Top 25 team since December 2003. Mann scored 11 of Belmont’s final 13 points as the team overcame an eight-point deficit with 2:37 to play and was named National Player of the Week by CBSSports.com NBCSports.com. He later scored 32 points in a win at Middle Tennessee State and a career-high 34 points in a home victory over Eastern Kentucky while being named OVC Player of the Week four times during the season. Mann also got the work done in the classroom and was named a first-team CoSIDA Capital One Academic All-American, one of just five nationally. Mann's honor is the second-straight Player of the Year honoree from Belmont, following Ian Clark (who is now playing with the Utah Jazz. It marks the first time that the same school has produced back-to-back Player of the Year winners with two different players since 1989 and 1990 (Murray State’s Jeff Martin and Popeye Jones).
After losing three starters from last year's NCAA Tournament team (including OVC Co-Player of the Year Ian Clark to the NBA's Utah Jazz), the Bruins were not picked to defend their crown. But Belmont proved the preseason prognosticators wrong in compiling a 14-2 OVC record for the second year in a row in winning the OVC regular season title for the second-straight season. Including three titles from when the team was in the Atlantic Sun, it marked the fifth-straight conference crown for the Bruins (and seventh title in nine years); since Belmont joined the Division I ranks in 1996-97, only eight other Division I programs have won five-straight conference titles (Butler, Cincinnati, Duke, Gonzaga, Kansas, Nevada and Xavier are the others). During the season Byrd helped the Bruins to an 83-80 victory at No. 11 North Carolina on Nov. 17; that marked the first OVC team to win a non-conference game against a ranked team since the 2011-12 season and was the highest ranked opponent topped by an OVC squad since 1987 (when Austin Peay beat No. 11 Illinois). Byrd, now in his 28th season at Belmont, also surpassed the legendary John Wooden on the NCAA all-time wins list during the season and enters the postseason with 686 career victories.
Faced with the task of filling the shoes left by two-time OVC Player of the Year and NBA Draft Pick, Payne did not miss a beat in leading the Murray State team in scoring. He scored 21 points in his collegiate debut and the rest of the season only failed to score in double figures five times (and in three of those games he scored nine points). Payne would score a career-high 29 points at Belmont and dished out a career-high 12 assists in a win at Austin Peay. He would go on to rank second in the OVC in assists (5.6/game), sixth in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.8), seventh in scoring (15.9 points/game) and steals (1.5/game) and eighth in 3-pointers made (2.1/game) in earning OVC Freshman of the Week honors nine times (the second-most in the history of the award). Overall he is the third Murray State player to win OVC Freshman of the Year honors joining Ivan Aska (2009) and Canaan (2010).
In his second year in the league Walden was a key factor in Eastern Kentucky leading the OVC in scoring defense (70.0 points/game) and scoring margin (+8.7 points/game). The junior is challenged nightly to defend the best guard on the opposition and he finished the season with 62 steals (2.1/game), which was second in the OVC (by just three steals). Overall Walden had at least one steal in 26 of EKU's 30 games on the year and had 20 total steals over the team's last eight contests (leading the Colonels to a 6-2 record over that stretch). As a team Eastern Kentucky ranks fifth nationally with 262 steals, 62 of which belong to Walden. He is the first EKU player to earn the Defensive Player of the Year honor which was first awarded in 2008-09.
ALL-OVC TEAMS
This year's first and second-team All-OVC squads include 10 players from seven OVC schools. Belmont, Murray State and Southeast Missouri led the way with two selections apiece. The first and second-teams included five seniors, three juniors, a sophomore and a freshman.
Mann earned his first All-OVC selection as did Payne who was the first freshman in recent memory to earn first-team honors. Tennessee State senior guard
Patrick Miller was the only repeat first-team selection, as Southeast Missouri senior forward
Tyler Stone moved up after being a second-team pick each of the past two years and Eastern Kentucky senior guard
Glenn Cosey jumped from being an All-Newcomer pick last year.
Miller finished the year as the leading scorer in the OVC, averaging 23.7 points/game (that number increased to 26.1 points/game in OVC contests); that ranked him fourth nationally while he also ranked sixth in the nation in minutes played (37:44/game). The senior scored 20-plus points 22 times and had 30 or more points in six games. He scored a career-high 38 points in the next-to-last game of the season at Morehead State, a contest that saw him hit the game-winning 3-pointer with two second remaining. Miller capped his stellar four-year career with 1,900 points and 196 career steals (both most among active OVC players) as well as 520 career assists (second most among active OVC players).
Stone helped Southeast Missouri shake off an inconsistent stretch in the middle of the season to win its final four games of the season and earn the No. 6 seed for the OVC Tournament. Over those final four games he averaged 19.3 points and 11.3 rebounds/game and was named OVC Player of the Week in back-to-back weeks. For the full season Stone ranked third in the OVC in each scoring (19.1 points/game), rebounding (9.5/game), blocked shots (1.5/game) and double-doubles (13). The senior had a career-high 37 points at SIUE on Feb. 6.
Cosey does a little bit of everything well and during the regular season ranked first in the OVC in 3-pointers made (3.3/game), second in assist-to-turnover ratio (2.4), third in free throw percentage (85.1%), fourth in scoring (18.8 points/game) and 3-point percentage (42.2%) and eighth in assists (4.3/game). He also became the 32nd player in EKU history to score 1,000 career points, doing so in just two seasons. In the team's win at Eastern Illinois on Jan. 2 he tied the OVC single-game record for 3-pointers made, connecting on 10-of-12 attempts on his way to a career-high 34 points; the 10 made 3-pointers are the second-most by a Division I player in a game this season. On Feb. 1 he banked in a 37-foot 3-pointer just before the final buzzer to lift his team to a one-point victory over Southeast Missouri.
The All-OVC second-team included Southeast Missouri State junior forward
Jarekious Bradley, Belmont sophomore guard
Craig Bradshaw, Murray State junior forward
Jarvis Williams, Morehead State junior guard
Angelo Warner and Eastern Illinois senior forward
Sherman Blanford.
Five players were selected to the OVC All-Newcomer Team, which was comprised of first-year players (freshman and transfers) in the league. Included in the selections was Payne, the OVC Freshman of the Year, and Bradley and Williams who were named to the All-OVC second team. The team also included SIUE sophomore guard
Donivine Stewart and Eastern Illinois redshirt junior guard
Reggie Smith.
2013-14 All-OVC Teams and Award Winners
Player of the Year: J.J. Mann, Belmont
Freshman of the Year: Cameron Payne, Murray State
Defensive Player of the Year: Corey Walden, Eastern Kentucky
Coach of the Year: Rick Byrd, Belmont
First Team All-OVC
J.J. Mann, Belmont
Glenn Cosey, Eastern Kentucky
Tyler Stone, Southeast Missouri
Cameron Payne, Murray State
Patrick Miller, Tennessee State
Second Team All-OVC
Jarekious Bradley, Southeast Missouri
Craig Bradshaw, Belmont
Jarvis Williams, Murray State
Angelo Warner, Morehead State
Sherman Blanford, Eastern Illinois
OVC All-Newcomer Team
Cameron Payne, Murray State
Jarekious Bradley, Southeast Missouri
Jarvis Williams, Murray State
Donivine Stewart, SIUE
Reggie Smith, Eastern Illinois