Just a few more seasons to go in this Pac-12 Friday miniseries on college basketball in the Conference of (real NCAA) Champions and its Midwest partners, the B1G. As the summer looms before the final year of the Pac-12 as we know it, this current season under inspection is quirky. Nine teams combined made it to the NCAA Tournament, although none made the Final Four—yet three ended up in the poll’s Top 8 teams.

1991 Pac-10 PoY: Terrell Brandon, G, Oregon (original); Don MacLean, F, UCLA (revised)

The Arizona Wildcats won the conference by 3 games, with the UCLA Bruins coming in a distant second. Oregon Ducks guard Terrell Brandon won the PoY vote, despite his team finishing under .500 in conference play and overall as well. That’s a bad pick, really. We see the PoY winner as needing to come from the Wildcats roster with that conference championship and solid gap between first and second place.

Who are our choices? None, really. Five different Arizona players placed in the Top 10 lists for the five major statistical categories here, without any of them really displaying any dominance. This was truly a team effort, so we look to the Bruins next: the player that stands out to us is the good ol’ American Pie himself, forward Don MacLean. UCLA edged out Arizona State and USC for second place, so …

MacLean is probably why: the Bruins also had a well-rounded roster, but American Pie was the statistically dominant leader with 23.0 ppg and 7.3 rpg. He had strong, contributing teammates in all phases of the game around him, but no one else impacted the Bruins’ bottom line like he did, as MacLean finished fourth in the league for true shooting percentage (.617) and ninth for effective shooting percentage (.554).

1991 B1G PoY: Jim Jackson, G, Ohio State (original); Calbert Cheaney, G, Indiana (revised)

Indiana and Ohio State tied for the league title, finishing four games ahead of the pack. Buckeyes G Jim Jackson won the PoY vote, again. Jackson posted good, versatile numbers, but he wasn’t a dominant player, really. We see Hoosiers G Calbert Cheaney as being the more-valued player, overall, again: the Indiana star led the conference in eFG (.640), while finishing second in scoring (21.6 ppg) and true FG (.665).