UNC Basketball: Armando Bacot robbed of Player of the Year Award

Armando Bacot of the UNC basketball program received the most votes for All-ACC honors, but isn’t the ACC Player of the Year?! How is that?!

On Monday morning, the Atlantic Coast Conference announced their team and individual awards for the 2021-22 season.

Fans of the UNC basketball program beware: Armando Bacot was SNUBBED!

Alondes Williams of the Wake Forest Demon Deacons was named the ACC Player of the Year, as he received 41 first-place votes. Bacot finished second, as he received 10 fewer votes than the Wake graduate transfer.

Of course, we’re not taking anything away from Williams. In fact, he had a standout season in which he helped guide Wake Forest to a huge turnaround season. However, and despite how biased it may sound, Bacot was without a doubt snubbed of this honor.

For starters, almost every advanced metric that measures a player’s overall importance to a team favors Bacot over Williams. Here is an example of some of those metrics:

Bacot has a higher player efficiency rate (PER), win shares, Box Plus/Minus (BPM), offensive rating, and almost an identical defensive rating as Williams. Additionally, Bacot has a lower turnover rate, a higher shooting percentage, and the two players’ free-throw percentages are essentially identical.

Sure, you can look at simple stats such as points per game for reference, but in the areas that matter the most, the numbers show that Bacot is more impactful than any player in the conference. The Demon Deacons also finished two games behind the Tar Heels in the final standings of ACC play.

North Carolina went as far as Bacot took them. His dominant presence in the frontcourt was essential to the Tar Heels’ success in Hubert Davis’ first year at the helm. Only former Wake Forest (of course) power forward Tim Duncan had a better statistical season in ACC play than the year that Bacot put together during the 2021-22 campaign.

Even a legendary type of season couldn’t help Bacot get the award! And if you’re still trying to figure out how Bacot got snubbed, you may be even more mindblown by this next fact:

Bacot earned the most votes for All-ACC honors, as his 380 votes edged out Williams by seven votes. Essentially, you’re telling me that Bacot received the most votes for all-conference honors, but isn’t that league’s player of the year?!

Something simply just doesn’t add up!

How does Bacot earn the most votes for All-ACC honors, which is voted on by both coaches and the media, but then isn’t awarded the league’s player of the year? If he’s viewed by the voting panel as the best player in the conference, shouldn’t he also earn the individual award as well?

If you look at the entire ACC awards list, there is certainly some bias against the UNC basketball program in general. However, the biggest snub comes in the form of the ACC Player of the Year Award, as Armando Bacot put up a tremendous season that continues to not be appreciated as much as it should be.

At this point, you have to wonder if this is karma for Justin Jackson beating out Luke Kennard the ACC Player of the Year a few seasons ago, or if it’s as simple as the voters just getting this one wrong?

Either way, Armando Bacot was robbed of the ACC Player of the Year Award, and fans of the UNC basketball program have every right to be mad about it.

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