We only have three more of these Pac-12 Friday miniseries entries for college basketball in the Conference of (real NCAA) Champions and its Midwest partners, the B1G. The two conferences put a combined 8 teams into March Madness—two of them, both from the B1G, made the Elite Eight, and one of them won the national championship in quite exciting fashion. It was a fun experience for us as teenagers to watch it!

1987 Pac-10 PoY: Jose Ortiz, C, Oregon State (original); Reggie Miller, G, UCLA (revised)

The UCLA Bruins took the regular-season title by 1 game over Arizona, and then they won the conference tournament, too. Arizona finished second, and Oregon State was a distant third—4 games behind UCLA and tied with California and Washington. But Beavers center Jose Ortiz won the PoY vote, and we will have to really analyze this one to see if that works for us. Chances are it will not, but we are open minded, always.

We want to start with the Bruins, though, because they won the double double here, and the guy that stands out there is guard Reggie Miller: 22.2 ppg (2nd), 2.0 spg (2nd), .619 eFG (1st), and .659 TSP (first). He had a solid backcourt mate in Pooh Richardson, but Miller carried this team as far as it was going to go. Ortiz was good, too: 22.3 ppg (1st), 8.7 rpg (5th), and 1.4 bpg (4th). But here’s the kicker for us, which is familiar.

Ortiz was just third in eFG (.585) and fourth in TSP (.622), and when a guard is posting better numbers in those categories than a center, that’s a red flag in a discussion like this. We’re going with Miller all the way.

1987 B1G PoY: Dennis Hopson, G, Ohio State (original); Ken Norman, F, Illinois (revised)

Indiana and Purdue tied for the league championship, finishing 1 game ahead of Iowa and 2 games ahead of Illinois. That should be our player pool for the PoY, although Ohio State G Dennis Hopson won the vote despite his team finishing 6 games out of first place and ending up as a .500 team in conference play. That’s a bad vote, for sure, probably based on just his scoring average. Such Neanderthal thinking at the time!

And yes, Hopson (29.0 ppg) did top the league in scoring, and he was also fifth in rebounding (8.2 rpg), which is impressive for a guard. Hopson was also third in steals (2.2 spg). No doubt he had a great season, but it didn’t matter for a middling team finish. We like Fightin’ Illini forward Ken Norman instead for his production: 20.7 ppg (5th), 9.8 rpg (1st), 1.5 bpg (2nd), and .579 eFG (3rd). He is our pick for PoY, easily.