Our Pac-12 Fridays miniseries on college basketball in the Conference of (real NCAA) Champions and its Midwest partners, the B1G, features a fun season where each team placed its conference title winner into the Final Four. Alas, neither school won the national championship, but those achievements certainly denote a fantastic season for both leagues. Overall, the Pac-10 and the B1G each put six teams into the March Madness field, and four them combined made into the Sweet 16. Have to love hoops!

2007 Pac-10 PoY: Arron Afflalo, G, UCLA (original); Kyle Weaver, G, Washington State (revised)

The UCLA Bruins won the conference regular season by 2 games over the Washington State Cougars, although it was the Oregon Ducks who emerged victorious in the league tournament—despite finishing 4 games behind the champs. Bruins guard Arron Afflalo (5.5 WS) won the PoY vote, but he wasn’t even the best player on his own team: fellow guard Darren Collison (6.0) was. UCLA actually placed 3 players in the Top 10, while the Ducks managed 3 players in the Top 6! Not much left for the others.

Which brings us to Cougars G Kyle Weaver (5.9): He was third in the conference for overall value, and he didn’t have a teammate in the Top 10 at all. WSU started the season unranked and worked itself all the way up to No. 13 by the final Associated Press poll, so Weaver was the primary reason behind that incredible accomplishment. Plus, he had to live in Pullman, so no one else on our short list of candidates here had to endure that hell, either.

2007 B1G PoY: Alando Tucker, G, Wisconsin (original); Greg Oden, C, Ohio State (revised)

The Ohio State Buckeyes done did the double, winning the regular season by 2 games over Wisconsin and 5 games over Indiana—before going on to win the conference tournament with double-digit wins in all three games. The Buckeyes finished the season ranked No. 1 in the nation—although the Badgers themselves finished No. 6 as well. The voted MVP, Wisconsin G Alando Tucker, finished sixth (5.9) in the conference for Win Shares. It was an interesting season here in the B1G, for sure.

The Buckeyes had the No. 2 and No. 5 players, while the Badgers had the No. 6 and No. 10 players. That’s reflected in the standings, and Ohio State was so dominant, the PoY should come from that squad, so we see center Greg Oden (8.2) as the proper PoY choice here. He finished so far ahead of Tucker, too, in terms of WS margin, that it’s hard to deny him this award. He clearly was the most valuable on the best team here, with a WS mark significantly higher than the other vetted candidate(s).