The John R. Wooden Award presented by Wendy’s announced its Preseason Top 50 Watch List Tuesday on ESPN’s SportsCenter, and Tennessee seniors John Fulkerson and Yves Pons were among the candidates.
Chosen by a preseason poll of national college basketball experts, the list is comprised of 50 student-athletes who are the early front-runners for two of the most prestigious honors in college basketball, the Wooden Award All American Team and Most Outstanding Player Award.
Tennessee was one of 11 teams to land multiple players on the Wooden watch list, joining Baylor, Duke, Gonzaga, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, LSU, Stanford, Villanova and Virginia.
Fulkerson and Pons were among 20 seniors on the initial list. The list also included 12 juniors, 11 sophomores and seven freshmen.
The Wooden Award preseason top-50 list represents 11 conferences. The Big Ten leads all conferences with 10 selections, followed by the ACC and SEC with seven apiece, the Big 12 and PAC-12 with six each, the Big East with four, the Atlantic 10 and WCC with three apiece, the American with two selections and the Mountain West and Conference USA with one selection each.
The players on the list are considered strong candidates for the 2021 John R. Wooden Award Men’s Player of the Year presented by Wendy’s. Players not chosen to the preseason list are still eligible for the Wooden Award midseason list, late-season list and the national ballot. The national ballot consists of 15 top players who have proven to their universities that they meet or exceed the qualifications of the Wooden Award (including making progress toward graduation and maintaining at least a 2.0 cumulative GPA). Nearly 1,000 voters will rank, in order, 10 of those 15 players when voting opens prior to the NCAA Tournament and will allow voters to take into consideration performance during early-round games.
VFL Grant Williams was on the national ballot for the 2019 Wooden Award, and Lady Vols great Candace Parker won the women’s Wooden Award consecutively in 2007 and 2008.
The Wooden Award All American Team will be announced the week of the Elite Eight round of the NCAA Tournament. The winner of the 2021 John R. Wooden Award will be presented by Wendy’s following the NCAA Tournament in April.
-UT Athletics
