Once Again, Danny Manning Comes Out on Top : He Wins John Wooden Award as Player of Year After Leading Kansas to Title

Just as the University of Kansas basketball team rallied to put a big finish on its season as the surprise winner of the national title, so did Danny Manning come from behind to win the 12th annual John Wooden Award.

Actually, those comeback stories are the same. Manning won the award, which honors the outstanding college basketball player of the year, with a flurry of last-day, call-in votes after leading the Jayhawks to the title.

In the past, the deadline for the 1,008 sportswriters and sportscasters from across the nation to file votes for the award sponsored by Los Angeles Athletic Club was just before the Final Four of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament. This year, the deadline was after the final game, at the request of the voters, according to Duke Llewellyn, the athletic club’s senior vice president.

The votes that came in just before the Tuesday noon deadline made the difference in the closest vote in the history of the award.

Manning, a 6-foot 10-inch do-it-all player, won the award with 865 votes. Hersey Hawkins of Bradley, who led the nation with a scoring average of 36.2 points a game, was second with 845 points. Voters ranked their choices, 1-2-3, with their first choice getting 3 points.

The winner was announced by Jamaal Wilkes, a former UCLA player who was representing Coach John Wooden.

Sean Elliott of Arizona, the Pacific 10 player of the year, was third with 424 points. Danny Ferry of Duke, the dominant player in the Atlantic Coast Conference, was fourth with 386 points.

Elliott and Ferry, both juniors, were in Los Angeles, along with Manning and Hawkins, for a noon press conference to announce the Wooden Award winner and for a dinner at the L.A. Athletic Club Wednesday night when the trophy was presented.

Kansas Coach Larry Brown did not accompany Manning to Los Angeles for the Wooden festivities. Manning’s father, Ed, an assistant coach to Brown, made the trip instead.

His father beamed as Manning formally thanked the voters and his coaches and his teammates. . . . Asked how he managed always to be so unemotional when he watched his son from the bench, Ed Manning said, “It was awful tough over there on the bench when he was shooting those free throws (in the final seconds of the final game), but I didn’t want him to look over there and see me all squinted up.”

Manning put the free throws down, and Kansas won it all. “I do think the championship game made the difference for me to win this award,” Manning said. “A couple of weeks ago, I thought it was an honor to be nominated. But I didn’t know if I’d win it. Hersey was having an awful good season.”

Hawkins, who was named the Sporting News player of the year, was Manning’s roommate at the Pan Am trials last year. Manning made the team. Hawkins didn’t.

No doubt the two will be crossing paths in the National Basketball Assn. for a few years, too.

Hawkins’ coach at Bradley, Stan Albeck, a former NBA coach, gets the credit for adding so much scoring to Hawkins’ game. Albeck says it sold a lot of tickets, and he figures it will probably help recruiting. It’s not too hard to replace a national scoring leader. Albeck said, “I liken it to the USC tailback situation. I can tell a guy that I can guarantee him 20 shots a game. I lie a lot. But if I tell that to 5 guys, I ought to get 100 shots out of them.”

Hawkins, who had 44 points, 10 rebounds, 6 assists, 5 steals and 2 blocks in the game against Auburn, when Bradley was eliminated from the NCAA tournament, said he did not feel a lot of pressure to carry his team. Hawkins said, “The only pressure was getting Stan off my back, getting him to stop telling me to shoot the ball more.”

Hawkins took only 24 shots a game, hitting 53%.

In order to qualify for the Wooden Award, players must maintain at least a 2.0 grade-point average. When North Carolina discovered that J.R. Reid did not meet that qualification, his votes were not tabulated.

The voting for the other finalists: Gary Grant of Michigan, 160 points; Mark Macon of Temple, 129; David Rivers of Notre Dame, 95; Rony Seikaly of Syracuse, 66; Troy Lewis of Purdue, 58, and Charles Smith of Pittsburgh, 40.