Yesterday was Big East Media Day. The Big East coaches all voted for who they thought were the best players and teams going into the season, and the results are in. The Hoyas were picked to finish first (actually they ended up being co-favorites with Louisville as they received the same number of votes). Roy Hibbert was selected as the Big East Preseason Player of the Year. Hibbert and Jonathan Wallace were both named to the Preseason All Big East First Team. It’s often very rewarding to be recognized by one’s peers, but it’s a trap.

There is a lot that can go wrong when a player, coach, or team wins a preseason award and very little that can go right. If you’re the best in the league going into a season, you probably already know it. And if you personally already feel that you’re the best, the opinions of the coaches in your conference wouldn’t really factor too much into your thinking would it - do you think that the great Hoya teams of the 1980’s or the powerful UCONN teams of the late 1990’s cared if they were preseason picks to win the conference? The best players and teams are usually pretty focused on the matter at hand and have more to worry about than preseason recognition.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Anytime there are awards that are selected by opposing coaches in your conference, you’d better be careful. Coaches can send a lot of misdirection with their voting, deflecting attention from their own teams and trying to lull their opponents into false senses of security.

It’s hard to remember, but the players in the Big East are all kids. It’s very easy for kids to be affected by what appears in the media. There’s nothing more dangerous to a young player than believing in their own hype. Every year in college basketball there are players who have breakout seasons and then assume they’ll be in the NBA because of the attention they receive. Every year we see players who, in the midst of their own newly found fame, lose sight of the things that got them there and quickly vanish into oblivion.

This won’t happen to Hibbert, Wallace, or the Hoyas, but everything is going to be a little harder for everyone thanks to the nice fat bulls-eye that the Big East coaches have now branded to their chests.