Syracuse men’s basketball: Buddy Boeheim named to NABC Preseason Player of the Year watch list

Completely walking past the fact that we never saw this coming when Buddy Boeheim first committed to the Syracuse Orange men’s basketball program, the star guard received yet another preseason honor on Thursday:

The National Association of Basketball Coaches named Buddy as one of the 20 players on its preseason player of the year watch list. He’s one of just two ACC players to make the cut this year, along with Duke’s Paolo Banchero. While we don’t want to diminish any of the honors Boeheim’s received in advance of the 2021-22 season, the list has admittedly grown pretty long for the senior.

Buddy, who led the team with 17.8 points per game while shooting 38% from three, has been piling up awards going into this year. He was named first-team All-ACC, is on the watch list for the Jerry West Award (top shooting guard), All-American honors and has shown up on most writer lists for player of the year candidates as well. NCAA Tournament bias or not, we haven’t seen this much preseason love for an Orange player in a bit.

Perhaps best of all this offseason, he also might have convinced Beak and Skiff to bring him back for another year. So congrats to him for all of the above.