The Men's Basketball Academic All-America Team Member of the Year is the annually-awarded most outstanding singular college basketball male athlete selected for the Academic All-America Teams in a given year. The Academic All-America program is selected by the College Sports Communicators (formerly known as College Sports Information Directors of America, or CoSIDA), and recognizes combined athletic performance and academic achievement excellence of the nation's top student-athletes.
Men's basketball became the second sport with All-America team recognition in 1963. Since the 1987–88 academic year, All-America of the Year selections began with one winner each chosen from both the College and University Divisions for all All-America teams. Originally, the University Division team included eligible participants from National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I member schools, while the College Division team included scholar-athletes from all non-NCAA Division I institutions. Beginning in 2012, CoSIDA revamped its award structure. The University Division was renamed "Division I", and NCAA Division II and Division III were made their own separate All-American categories. The remaining schools initially still comprised the College Division. After the 2018 National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) division split off, the College Division was limited to two-year colleges, Canadian universities and Canadian colleges and institutions not affiliated with the NCAA or NAIA. A fifth Division with NAIA schools separate from Canadian and two-year member schools was announced with selections only in the At-large category.
Currently, each team selects Academic All-District honorees in eight geographic districts across the United States and Canada. The districts are: District 1 (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont), District 2 (Delaware, District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia), District 3 (North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia), District 4 (Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico, South Carolina), District 5 (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio), District 6 (Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Wyoming), District 7 (Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas), and District 8 (Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Canada). The All-District honorees make up the All-America team ballots. Currently, all twelve Academic All-American teams (men's and women's basketball, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's track & field, men's baseball, women's softball, men's American football, women's volleyball, men's and women's swimming & diving, men's and women's tennis and men's and women's at-large teams) have one Academic All-American of the Year per division. One of these twelve sport-by-sport Academic All-Americans of the year is selected as the Academic All-America Team Member of the Year for each division. The most recent men's basketball players to receive the all-sports honor are Cooper Cook of Nebraska Wesleyan University and Kyle Steigenga of Cornerstone University, respectively named in Division III and the former College Division in 2018.
History
, Illinois Wesleyan University has had the most men's basketball Academic All-America honorees, and three Illinois Wesleyan Titans have been recognized with this award a total of four times.
Several of the Men's Basketball Academic All-America of the Year winners have gone on to win the overall Academic All-America of the Year. Michael Smith was the first University Division overall winner in 1988. Alec Kessler (1990), Todd Fuller (1996) and Emeka Okafor (2004) also won the University Division overall Academic All-America. Before the College Division was split, Korey Coon (2000) and Troy Ruths (2008) won the overall award. Since the split there have been no Division I or Division II overall winners. However, Colton Hunt (2013), John Coleman (2015) and Cooper Cook (2018) have won the Division III award. Kyle Steigenga (2018) has won the College Division award.
Several have been repeat winners of this award. Notably, Ben Vander Plas, the Division I recipient in 2022 and 2023, is the only repeat winner to have been honored at different schools—Ohio in 2022 and Virginia in 2023.
Tables of winners
+KeyIndicates winners of the all-sports Academic All-America award. All winners are American unless indicated otherwise.
Two-division era (1988–2011) +Men's Basketball Academic All-America Team Members of the Year (1988–2011) Year University Division College Division Winner School Winner School 1988 Brigham YoungElon 1989 GeorgiaLipscomb 1990 GeorgiaLipscomb 1991 Saint Francis (PA) 1992 Wisconsin–Green BayLipscomb 1993 Vanderbilt 1994 Gonzaga 1995 John Amaechi Penn State Nittany Lions 1996 North Carolina StateMorehead State 1997 Kansas 1998 Notre DameElon 1999 Lamar 2000 Northern Illinois 2001 Duke 2002 Florida 2003 Florida 2004 UConn 2005 Michigan State 2006 Johannes Herber West Virginia2007 Iowa 2008 Drake 2009 North Dakota State 2010 Kansas 2011 Butler
Four-division era (2012–present) +Men's Basketball Academic All-America Team Members of the Year (2012–present) Year Division I Division II Division III College/NAIA Winner School Winner School Winner School Winner School 2012 North Carolina Casey Coons 2013 Ohio State 2014 (2) Ohio State 2015 Yale 2016 Iowa 2017 Florida UC San Diego 2018 West Virginia 2019 UMBC 2020 LSU 2021 Gonzaga 2022 Ohio 2023 (2) Virginia 2024 Texas Jefferson Coe Jonathan BrownCumberlands 2025 Carson–Newman Anderson (IN) College of Idaho 2026 (2)Carson–Newman MSOE Keiser
See also List of Academic All-America Team Members of the Year
Footnotes
References
External links Academic All-America information page All-time list