Quincy Olivari doesn’t get the respect he deserves

The Big East slapped Xavier’s best player in the face with an indefensible decision.

Quick, if a player leads a conference in scoring and three pointers made, finishes second in three point percentage, fifth in free throw percentage, 20th in rebounding as a 6-3 guard, 11th in steals, and is not lower than 19th in any offensive metric, which spot on the all-conference team should he play? Clearly that guy can go anywhere from the one to the three, right?

Nope. The Big East named Quincy Olivari to honorable mention all-conference. That’s obviously a stupid decision that just beggars belief. It’s not as if Q is some volume scorer or a guy who only scores. His defensive rebounding rate was higher than Abou Ousmane’s. Not impressed by that because Abou wasn’t very good? Fine. Quincy defensive rebounded better than Ryan Kalkbrenner or anyone on UConn not named Clingan or Newton. 6-11 Oso Ighodaro? Not as good a defensive rebounder as Q.

Olivari finished the regular season with a slash line of 19.5/5.5/2.0 on .434/.432/.811 shooting. There are six spots on the all Big East first team and five on the second team. The Big East picked one big (Kalkbrenner) in those spots, leaving 10 that could have gone to Olivari. Is Cam Spencer as good a player as Q? No. His final line was 14.7/4.6/3.4 on .492/.451/.902 with usage rate over 6% lower. Trey Alexander needed significantly more shots to score significantly fewer points. The idea that Daniss Jenkins is better than Q is just absolutely laughable. He managed three more assists per game, because he’s a point guard, but shot nearly as much as Q to score five fewer points per game.

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Eric Dixon? Not even close. He snagged half a rebound more per game, but was outscored, outassisted, and outstolen by Olivari. He also wasn’t as efficient on offense. Neither was the aforementioned Jenkins. Or Trey Alexander (who wasn’t even top 500). Tyler Kolek, golden boy of the media? Not as efficient as Quincy Olivari on offense, even with his glittering assist numbers. Quincy was top 15 in efficiency despite being top 15 in usage and top 10 in shots percentage. He scored well and often.

The conference high scoring game? Quincy Olivari. The conference high scoring half. Quincy Olivari followed by Quincy Olivari. The top scorer in the second best conference in the nation? Quincy Olivari.

And it’s not as if he’s an unlikable guy who shouldn’t be recognized because he’s hard to deal with. Quincy has been a display at show and tell, eaten lunch at elementary schools, visited fans at home, signed and given away posters, met countless little kids that idolize him, used his social media to connect with fans, boosted his teammates with online clips from their youth, and in general endeared himself to everyone who has met. The man cried talking about how much his dad meant to him at a press conference and completely glossed over the reason he was answering questions was because he’d just scored 43 points in a game.

Quincy Olivari is a first team all Big East player. Perhaps the other coaches were too scarred by what he did to vote for him. Maybe they wished he was playing for them. Maybe, surely in the case of Kolek, they just got caught up in the hype and didn’t actually bother to look at the numbers. Whatever the reason, the Big East messed up. Quincy, of course, didn’t care that much.

First team.