Nelson Big West Player of the Year

The UC Irvine men’s basketball team, which clinched the school’s third Big West Conference regular-season title in four seasons with a convincing victory over UC Davis on Saturday, dominated all-conference honors announced on Monday.

Senior guard Luke Nelson was named Player of the Year, while junior forward Jonathan Galloway collected Best Defensive Player laurels, and Russell Turner was named Coach of the Year.

Senior Jaron Martin was a first-team all-conference pick, while Ioannis Dimakopoulos, a 7-foot-2 senior center, was a second-team honoree.

Nelson, who averaged a team-best 17.2 points per game, is a two-time first-team all-conference performer. The four-year starter from Worthing, England, is UCI’s career leader in three-point field goals (247) and ranks fifth in UCI annals in assists (395) and steals (138). He is eighth all-time at UCI in scoring (1,467), just eight points shy of former two-time Big West Player of the Year Kevin Magee.

The 6-foot-3 Nelson is only the fourth Anteater to earn Player of the Year honors in conference. He is the first since Jerry Green was a repeat selection in 2001 and 2002.

Nelson scored 29 points, including a career-best seven three-pointers, in Saturday’s clinching victory and averaged 22.5 in his final five conference games. He missed three Big West games due to a hamstring injury, an ailment that also sidelined him for 15 nonconference games to start the season.

Martin, a 5-10 guard, averaged 13.9 points and had nine 20-point games this season.

Entering the Big West Tournament, in which UCI (19-13, 12-4 in conference) opens against No. 8-seeded UC Riverside on Thursday at 6 p.m. at Honda Center, Martin has a team-best 70 three-pointers this season. Twice the Big West Player of the Week this season, Martin’s 180 career three-pointers rank No. 6 at UCI.

Galloway is the fourth Anteater in the last five seasons to be named the conference’s top defender. The 6-foot-9 first-year starter is averaging 7.4 points this season and 8.4 rebounds in Big West play. He leads UCI with 32 blocked shots and is an anchor to the unit that leads the conference, and ranks No. 7 in the nation in field-goal-percentage defense (.381).

Dimakopoulos, a native of Greece, is averaging 11.4 points and 4.3 rebounds with 26 blocked shots this season. He averaged 19 points and eight rebounds in a pair of wins to earn Big West Player of the Week honors in January.

Turner, in his seventh season, has guided UCI to outright conference regular-season titles in 2014 and 2017. UCI shared the regular-season crown last year and won the Big West Tournament in 2015 to earn the program’s first Division I berth into the NCAA Tournament.

Turner, who was also Coach of the Year in 2014, has 112 wins, including 60 in conference play over the last five seasons.

— From staff reports