Duke’s Jahlil Okafor, Syracuse’s Rakeem Christmas headline TJO’s All-ACC Awards

Duke freshman Jahlil Okafor and Syracuse senior Rakeem Christmas headline The Juice Online’s 2014-15 All-ACC Basketball Team, as voted upon by staffers Brad Bierman, Jim Stechshulte and Jeff Irvine.

Okafor was TJO’s unanimous selection for All-ACC First Team, Player of the Year, and Rookie of the Year honors. Christmas, Notre Dame senior guard Jerian Grant and Louisville forward Montrezl Harrell were also unanimous selections for All-ACC First Team honors, while Virginia head coach Tony Bennett swept the awards for Coach of the Year.

Bierman and Stechschulte break down their reasoning below:

Jim Stechschulte: Selecting the first team was the easiest part of the process.  With three players in the conversation for Player of the Year (Rakeem Christmas, Jerian Grant, and Jahlil Okafor)and a fourth (Montreal Harrell) who lived up to about 95% of his preseason hype as an All-American candidate, the work was mostly done.  As the leading scorer in the ACC by a country mile, Olivier Hanlan of Boston College was an easy fifth choice, especially when he got to his gaudy 21.9 points per game average in conference play on strong shooting (48.3 percent FG, ACC-best 43.6 percent from three) and also handed out four assists per game.

The second and third teams in the conference had much more gray area, especially in light of Virginia’s team being so dominant without having individually dominant players.  If you read my column on Michael Gbinije last week, you know he earned my third-team vote with strong all-around play.  The hardest inclusion was Devin Thomas from Wake Forest, but I could not overlook his 50 percent shooting from the field and rebounding work, which lead to his 14 double-doubles, including eight in ACC play.

Brad Bierman: Voting for all ACC conference honors in the various categories for a league with the quality of its 15 members certainly provides its dilemmas, especially after you get past the first team and list players 6-15, along with the specialized all-league teams. There were so many great players that either fulfilled lofty preseason expectations, came on strong unexpectedly for winning programs, or were undeniable building blocks for teams looking to climb the treacherous ACC steps and get into the conference discussion for an NCAA bid in the next season or two.

SU’s Rakeem Christmas was certainly worthy and an easy choice as a first team All-ACC selection, but it was a really hard decision for most improved player between the Orange graduate student star and Miami’s junior center Tonye Jekiri. Statistically, covering field goal and free throw shooting, rebounding, blocks and points per game, Jekiri’s overall numbers improved year-to-year more than any other player in the league as he finished just ahead of Notre Dame’s Zach Auguste, and Jekiri led two of the categories (rebounding and blocks) while Christmas led in points per game improvement. After some deliberation, through cringing Orange teeth, we gave the edge to Jekiri.

» Related: Syracuse basketball’s season ends with loss to NC State

ALL-ACC FIRST TEAM

 ALL-ACC SECOND TEAM

ALL-ACC THIRD TEAM

 ACC INDIVIDUAL AWARD WINNERS

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