The Big Ten conference announced season honors for men’s basketball on Monday evening ahead of this week’s conference tournament in Chicago. Rutgers players Geo Baker and Eugene Omoruyi received Honorable Mention All-Big Ten Honors. Baker was selected by both the coaches and media, while Omoruyi was selected by the media. In addition, Shaq Doorson received the Sportsmanship award for Rutgers.
Baker averaged 12.3 points, 4.1 assists, 3.1 rebounds, and 1.7 steals this season. He finished second in the Big Ten in steals, fifth in assists, eighth in minutes played at 33.8 per game, as well as ninth best assist to turnover ratio at 1.4. Rutgers was 7-1 when Baker scored 16 or more points and he tallied double digits 22 times this season.
Omoruyi led Rutgers this season in scoring at 13.7 points per game and rebounds at 7.3 per game. It was clear he was one of the most improved players in the Big Ten this season, improving, his per game scoring average by 5.8 points and rebounds by 2.3. He also averaged 2.4 assists per contest and registered 7 double-doubles. He finished 10th in the Big Ten in rebounding and 19th in scoring. Gene improved tremendously from the free throw line this season, improving on last year’s mark of 54.1% by making 70.5% this season on 13 more attempts.
Baker and Omoruyi are just the third and fourth Rutgers players to receive All-Big Ten season honors and the first pair of teammates to be selected in the same season. Corey Sanders was an honorable mention selection by the coaches and media in the 2016-2017 season, while Myles Mack was the first Scarlet Knight to receive the honor, being named by the media for the 2014-2015 season.
For a full list of all of the conference honors announced by the Big Ten on Monday, click here. For my selections for SB Nation’s All-Big Ten team, click here.
Rutgers finished in a three-way tie for tenth place in the Big Ten regular season and will take on Nebraska as the 12 seed on Wednesday against 13 seed Nebraska. I’ll have a full game preview on Tuesday.