{"id":14290,"date":"2024-02-16T15:07:48","date_gmt":"2024-02-16T20:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=14290"},"modified":"2024-02-16T15:07:48","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T20:07:48","slug":"michigan-state-basketball-tyson-walker-named-to-naismith-award-watchlist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=14290","title":{"rendered":"Michigan State basketball: Tyson Walker named to Naismith Award watchlist"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Michigan State basketball star Tyson Walker was named to the Naismith Award watchlist with a month left in the regular season.<\/h2>\n<p>The end of the season is heating up as Michigan State basketball is beginning to position itself in the Big Ten standings and working on improving its NCAA Tournament resume. This season hasn\u2019t gone as we may have hoped, but one Spartan in particular has had an excellent season.<\/p>\n<p>Tyson Walker has been lights out for MSU all season long. So much so that he was just named to the midseason Naismith Award watchlist.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">One of the best players in all of college basketball \u2755 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/cxMyVwrYlh\">pic.twitter.com\/cxMyVwrYlh<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Michigan State Men&#39;s Basketball (@MSU_Basketball) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MSU_Basketball\/status\/1758178937560318133?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 15, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Tyson Walker named to midseason Naismith Award watchlist<\/h3>\n<p>This is no small feat for Tyson and is a huge recognition for the impressive season he has had. The Naismith Award is the most prestigious in all of college basketball, similar to the Heisman in football. The award goes to the best player in college basketball, regardless of age or position. And as it stands today, Walker is one of 30 players still in the running for it.<\/p>\n<p>He is also one of four Big Ten players included on this list. Northwestern\u2019s Boo Buie is on the list as well as Purdue\u2019s Zach Edey and Braden Smith.<\/p>\n<p>This is awesome for Walker to make it on this list, but what matters most is where he\u2019s at when the season comes to an end. So does he stand a chance at winning this award?<\/p>\n<h3>Walker\u2019s chances of winning this award<\/h3>\n<p>Unfortunately, I don\u2019t think Walker stands a realistic chance of winning the award. Obviously the impossible could happen and Walker could finish at a crazy statistical pace, but that isn\u2019t likely.<\/p>\n<p>For Walker to win, he\u2019d likely need to score 30-plus points every game, MSU would need to win every game, and Purdue would need to stumble so the Spartans can win a share of the Big Ten title. Considering Purdue has a four-game lead over Michigan State, I don\u2019t see that happening.<\/p>\n<p>What can\u2019t happen is what we saw in <a href=\"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/michigan-state-basketball-takeaways-win-at-penn-state\/\">MSU\u2019s 80-72 win over Penn State<\/a>. The Spartans still won, but Walker only scored six points. At the end of the day, winning is all that matters and Tyson would agree, but if he wants to win awards at the end of the season he can\u2019t have any more games like that.<\/p>\n<p>Purdue\u2019s Zach Edey is the frontrunner as of today to win this award. The Boilermakers are one of the best teams in the country and Edey is their best player, so him winning it wouldn\u2019t be surprising.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of who wins it, Walker is a special player and honors like this prove that. He may not win this award, but that doesn\u2019t mean he hasn\u2019t had an amazing year this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well-deserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":14313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[190,189,504,202],"class_list":["post-14290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","tag-michigan-state-basketball","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-news","tag-tyson-walker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}