Five men's college basketball players were named finalists for the John R. Wooden Award on Wednesday, with Kansas junior guard Ochai Agbaji among the five standouts on the list.
Agbaji, who will lead the Jayhawks in a Final Four matchup with Villanova on Saturday, joins Wisconsin's Johnny Davis, Iowa's Keegan Murray, Gonzaga's Drew Timme and Kentucky's Oscar Tshiebwe on the list of finalists.
The 6-foot-5 Agbaji leads KU in scoring at 18.9 points per game to go along with 5.2 rebounds, and he has the Jayhawks in the Final Four for the first time since 2018. Agbaji was projected as a lottery pick in ESPN's most recent NBA mock draft, published earlier this week:
The leading Wooden candidate when ballots were distributed earlier this month was widely perceived to be Tshiebwe, who led the nation with 15.1 rebounds to go along with a team-high 17.4 points and 1.6 blocks. Tshiebwe's rebound numbers are the best in Division I college basketball since Monti Davis of Tennessee State averaged 16.2 during the 1978-79 season. Kentucky, a No. 2 seed, was upset in the first round of the NCAA tournament by 15-seed Saint Peter's.
Along with the Wooden Award finalists, the Wendy's All-American team was also revealed Wednesday, including the five finalists mentioned above as well as Kofi Cockburn (Illinois), Chet Holmgren (Gonzaga), Jaden Ivey (Purdue), Bennedict Mathurin (Arizona) and Jabari Smith (Auburn).
Holmgren, Ivey, Mathurin and Smith are all projected as NBA lottery picks by ESPN.
The five players listed on the national ballot for the John R. Wooden Award who were not chosen as Wooden finalists or named to the Wendy's All-American team were Duke's Paolo Banchero, Villanova's Collin Gillespie, UCLA's Johnny Juzang, Auburn's Walker Kessler and Ohio State's E.J. Liddell.
