Doug McDermott spent his senior season passing a lot of big names on the career scoring list. He is now among some very select company.
The senior forward from Creighton was a unanimous choice for The Associated Press All-America team on Monday. He is the first three-time choice in 29 years and the 11th player overall.
McDermott, who led the nation in scoring at 26.9 points a game, joins Oscar Robertson, Lew Alcindor, Pete Maravich and Bill Walton among others. The last three-time All-Americas were Patrick Ewing of Georgetown and Wayman Tisdale of Oklahoma from 1982-85.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine being with names of that caliber,” McDermott said. “Truly an honor to be an All-American three straight years. It’s hard to wrap my mind around being in the company of those guys.”
McDermott was one of four seniors on this year’s team, which included freshman Jabari Parker of Duke. The other seniors all came from the first-year American Athletic Conference: Russ Smith of Louisville, Shabazz Napier of Connecticut and Sean Kilpatrick of Cincinnati.
It’s the first time one conference had three players picked since the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2001-02 with Duke’s Shane Battier and Jason Williams and North Carolina’s Joseph Forte.
McDermott received 65 first-team votes and 325 points from the same national media panel that selects the weekly Top 25.
Parker drew 55 first-team votes and was second with 303 points. Smith had 54 first-team votes and 298 points, 44 more than Napier, who got 37 first-team votes. Kilpatrick was a first-team pick 37 times and had 243 points.
McDermott led Creighton to a successful first season in the Big East but the Bluejays lost by 30 points to Baylor in the third round of the NCAA tournament.
“You can’t take away from what we did this year. We made some noise in the first year of the Big East, and we beat some great teams and got a three seed for the first time in school history,” he said. “All that is very special, something we’ll never forget.”
The 6-foot-8 McDermott averaged 7.0 rebounds and shot 52.5 percent from the field and 45.4 percent from 3-point range. McDermott considered leaving for the NBA after last season.
Parker was one of the heralded freshmen this season, and he was the one who crashed the seniors’ All-America party. The 6-8 native of Chicago averaged 19.3 points and 8.8 rebounds, taking over the scoring load for the Blue Devils down the stretch of the season.
Nick Johnson of Arizona was the leading vote-getter on the second team and was joined by freshman Andrew Wiggins of Kansas, Nik Stauskas of Michigan, Melvin Ejim of Iowa State and T.J. Warren of North Carolina State.
