Should DeSean Murray Be Considered for Big South Freshman of the Year?

The Presbyterian Blue Hose have surprised some people in conference play with two big road wins that have the Blue Hose at 2-4. PC can inch closer to .500 with a win at home against a struggling Campbell squad on Thursday and the biggest part of the Blue Hose resurgence is do to freshman guard DeSean Murray.

Murray has only suited up in 7 games for the Hose as he played in the two opening games at Duke and against Piedmont before sitting out due to undisclosed injury until January 3. Since then he's averaging 18.8 points, 10.2 rebounds, and 2.6 assists per game for Gregg Nibert's squad.

So the questions is at this point, should Murray be considered for Freshman of the Year in the conference since he likely missed out on a quarter of PC's season?

Challenging Murray is Longwood's Ryan Badowski who is averaging 9.9 points and 2.7 rebounds per game in 20 games for the Lancers. Right behind Badowski is Asheville's Kem Ubaru with 8.2 points and 4.7 rebounds per contest, but he also missed five games this season as well. There is also Curtis Phillips and Troy Harper at Campbell both putting up about 9 points per game in conference play and Xavier Cooks at Winthrop who has had some monster performances and is currently 8.7 points and 5.7 rebounds in Big South play.

Simply put, no one has the statline or has been as impressive as Murray this conference season. Personally, I've always thought that conference awards are just that, conference awards. The accolades given out at the end of the year should be heavily weighted towards your performance in-conference. It's an argument I presented when former Longwood big man Michael Kessens was battling John Brown for this same award two years ago.

There is a lot of basketball left but this will certainly be an interesting debate that should heat up as we get closer to March.