Josh Hart, Grayson Allen Highlight Wooden Award Preseason List

Villanova’s Josh Hart and Duke’s Grayson Allen highlight the John R. Wooden Award Preseason Top 50 announced Tuesday.

Several universities feature multiple players on the list: Duke (Allen, Harry Giles, and Jayson Tatum), Kansas (Devonte’ Graham, Frank Mason III, and Josh Jackson), Kentucky (Edrice Adebayo, De’Aaron Fox, and Malik Monk) and Oregon (Chris Boucher, Dillon Brooks, and Tyler Dorsey) lead the honors with three candidates apiece, while Indiana, North Carolina, Villanova, Virginia, and Xavier each have two players each on the Preseason Top 50.

The trend of recognizing outstanding freshmen continues with seven named to the list: Adebayo, Fox, and Monk of Kentucky; Jarrett Allen of Texas; Miles Bridges of Michigan State; Markelle Fultz of Washington; Giles and Tatum of Duke;  Jackson of Kansas; Lauri Markkanen of Arizona; Dennis Smith, Jr. of NC State.

The Top 50 nominees represent 10 conferences. The ACC leads all conferences with 12 selections, followed by the Big Ten (10), Pac-12 (7), Big 12 (6), Big East (5), SEC (5). The Atlantic 10 Conference has two selections and the Horizon League, The American and WCC each have one selection.

The Wooden Award All-American Team will be announced the week of the “Elite Eight” round of the NCAA Tournament. The winner of the 2017 John R. Wooden Award will be announced during the ESPN College Basketball Awards Show presented by Wendy’s on Friday, April 7, 2017.