College basketball: Kansas’ Frank Mason III, Gonzaga’s Mark Few win top honors

No piece of hardware could take Frank Mason III’s mind off what could have been. The senior point guard from Kansas was selected the AP player of the year Thursday at the Final Four in Phoenix. He was there without his teammates since the Jayhawks were eliminated in the Midwest Regional final by Oregon.

“I’ve still been thinking about it. It’s been on my mind a lot,” Mason said when asked if he had gotten over that loss. “And I just have to move on to what’s next. And I just look at the bigger picture and focus on everything that I can control.”

Mason said he expected to be at the Final Four with his teammates and coaches.

“You know, I didn’t plan on doing this,” Mason said. “My goals and our goals as a team was to be here as a family.”

Gonzaga’s Mark Few, the AP’s coach of the year, has his team here as the Bulldogs make their first Final Four appearance.

“I don’t know that it really truly sinks in. And again, it’s a credit to this team that God has put me in position to lead,” Few said. “But again, it’s not really about me. I mean, this is about Gonzaga and this year.”

The Bulldogs, who are 36-1 this season, are in the NCAA Tournament under Few for the 18th consecutive year.

Few, who has a career record of 502-112, received 37 votes from the same 65-member national media panel that selects the weekly Top 25.

Sean Miller of Arizona received eight votes while Chris Collins of Northwestern had seven and SMU’s Tim Jankovich got six.

Few, the third-fastest Division I coach to record 500 victories, said the foundation for success was made by players making sacrifices.

“It’s a unique house. I mean, we’re not from the traditional blue-blood deal, but we’ve worked hard to get to this point,” Few said.

Mason received 37 votes, well ahead of Josh Hart of Villanova, who got 16. Caleb Swanigan of Purdue had nine and Lonzo Ball of UCLA had three. Mason is the first Kansas player to win the award.

Plum, Auriemma win top awards in women’s basketball

Kelsey Plum had a historic season for Washington while Geno Auriemma did one of his best coaching jobs at UConn.

Both were overwhelming choices as the Associated Press women’s basketball player and coach of the Year in awards announced Thursday.

Plum broke the career NCAA scoring mark, topping Jackie Stiles’ 16-year-old record in style with a 57-point effort on her senior night.

“If you had told me that all this stuff would have happened to me personally, I would have laughed at you,” Plum said. “Not the sense that I didn’t believe in myself or anything like that. But it’s not something that you think about. I’m the all-time leading scorer in college basketball and it’s something I never dreamed about.”

All-time NCAA scoring leader Kelsey Plum tries to score on a layup against USC’s Courtney Jaco during a Pac-12 game Jan. 6.

(Elaine Thompson / Associated Press)

Auriemma did laugh before the season at the notion his Huskies, who lost three All-Americans to graduation, would be undefeated this year. He thought there was no way that the team’s 75-game winning streak would continue that much longer. Not with a schedule filled with top teams.

Yet UConn met every challenge and enter the Final Four without a loss, winners of 111 straight games.

“This year, our coaching staff, it was hard. It was really, really hard because the of the people that we had to replace, the schedule that we had early on, the lack of depth, what we thought we had going in and what we ended up with ultimately,” Auriemma said. “There were just a lot of challenges going into this season. I’m probably prouder of what our coaching staff did this season than I am since anytime going back to Diana (Taurasi)’s junior year. That was probably the last time that I thought we really, really, really did about as good a job as you can possibly do, maybe more so. That was the last time I remember it being this hard.”

Plum received 30 of the 33 votes from the national media panel that selects the weekly Top 25. A’ja Wilson of South Carolina, Gabby Williams and Katie Lou Samuelson of UConn each received a vote. The voting was done before the start of the NCAA tournament.

Auriemma garnered 26 of the votes for coach of the year. Oregon State’s Scott Rueck was second with three while Drake’s Jennie Baranczyk received two. Duke’s Joanne P. McCallie and Mississippi State’s Vic Schaefer each received one vote. It’s the ninth time that Auriemma has been honored as the AP’s coach of the year, including the last two years.

Etc.

Arizona freshman forward Lauri Markkanen is leaving early for the NBA and is expected to hire an agent. An athletic 7-footer from Finland, Markkanen averaged 15.6 points and 7.2 rebounds and was named a third-team All-American by the Associated Press. He shot 49% from the floor and 42% from three-point range while helping lead the Wildcats to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament. … Forward Collin Hartman will return to Indiana next fall for his fifth season. The 6-foot-7, 220-pound senior missed all of the 2016-17 season with a left knee injury.