Discussing the Daily News' "Of The Year" Awards

I thought I'd spend some time today discussing the Daily News' selections for the paper's end-of-season awards. And above, feel free to watch the highlights from the Ball State-Nebraska football game.

Anyway, here they are:

Player of the Year - Nate Davis

Well, it was certainly a better selection than the fan's vote for POY, which was...Julie DeMuth? Davis, of course, would've been my vote since he's the face of the Ball State athletic program. He had an unbelievably awesome year, setting absolutely ridiculous pass records. The career records should be obliterated by the time Davis leaves, whether he leaves after his junior or senior year. He still needs work on his deep ball, but his best deep ball will be talked about in a second.

Play of the year - Paige Esford's second one in hole on consecutive days

I will be honest, the consecutive hole-in-ones is very, very impressive. But, maybe this is because I have a bias to the big sports, Davis' touchdown pass to Love in the Nebraska game has to be the play of the year, right? I mean, that play is just sick. I love (no pun intended) how Davis just threw it up in the air..not only that, it was a 65-yard pass ON THE MONEY with two Cornhusker defenders draped on Love like white on Rice. It's about 1:28 into the video up top. You can even hear the collective moans from Husker Stadium when Love catches it.

Coach of the Year - Joel Walton

My only problem with giving the men's volleyball team awards is that there are only 50 teams in Division I-A men's volleyball. So when we're ranked No. 15 or so, I always try to take that with a grain of salt. But the Cardinals were pretty solid this year, coming within a game of the Final Four. Of course, in the three OSU games, we didn't even crack the 22-point mark in three games. But I don't know who else there would be, so I can agree with Joel Walton.

Freshman of the Year - Kolbrin Vitek

No qualms here. Vitek is 6-1 with a 5.08 ERA. While that number is a little higher than I would like, he has 63 strikeouts in 56 2/3 innings. Also, opponents are hitting .299 against him. Yuck.

Quote of the year - Joel Walton

"[The first game] was expletive, expletive, expletive, holy expletive. We need to do something better expletive," Walton said. "We did a good job working our way back into the match after a really crappy start, but we're going to play some great teams, and we are going to have to get off to some better starts and not have to work so hard just to finish matches."
- Joel Walton, about his team's 17-30, 27-30, 30-28, 30-25, 15-13 win against Lewis on Jan. 25.

I can't argue that, I love curse words.

Top five games of the year:

Top five games of the year:
1. Football vs. Navy
2. Men's basketball vs. No. 5 Georgetown
3. Men's volleyball vs. No. 7 UCLA
4. Football vs. No. 24 Nebraska
5. Soccer vs. Miami (MAC Tournament semi finals)

My lack of familiarity with soccer v. Miami hinders me here, but overall, I have no problem with this list. In terms of national coverage, I'd probably slide the Nebraska game into the three spot here. The Navy game was unbelievable. Definitely a game we shouldn't have won but we pulled it out. You could also make the argument that we should've won the Nebraska game, so it evens out. Men's basketball against Georgetown, would've been nice had more than 3,000 people showed up. If anything, it shows that people don't care who we play, they'd rather see quality basketball. Like in 2001, after the Maui experience, there were 9,000 in the stands for our home game against Elon..freaking Elon. So there. So many great things about the Navy and Nebraska games.