BATON ROUGE ? LSU’s Ben Simmons added another major honor to his haul of awards from his 2015-16 season on Wednesday when the United States Basketball Writers Association announced that he was selected to receive the Integris Wayman Tisdale Award as the national freshman of the year.?
Simmons, a 6-10 forward from Melbourne, Australia, now adds the prestigious Tisdale Award to national FOY honors already bestowed by USA Today and The Sporting News. He also is the consensus freshman of the Year and a first-team USBWA All-America choice.
Simmons led all Division I freshmen in the regular season in rebounds this season with an 11.8 average and was third among all freshman in scoring with a 19.8 mark. He ranked fifth nationally among all players with 23 double-doubles and shot 56.0 percent from the field.?
Simmons was also named to the USBWA’s five-man freshman All-America team. He is joined on the team by the other Tisdale Award finalists: Jaylen Brown of California, Henry Ellenson of Marquette, Brandon Ingram of Duke and Jamal Murray of Kentucky.
Simmons will be presented with the Tisdale Award at the College Basketball Awards gala and dinner on April 11 at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
Other awards to be presented that night are the Oscar Robertson Trophy for national player of the year; the Henry Iba Award for coach of the year to Chris Mack of Xavier; and the Wayman Tisdale Humanitarian Award presented by Love’s Travel Stops to former Missouri coach Norm Stewart.
Oklahoma City-based Access Sports, a non-profit organization involved in various charitable activities to help disadvantaged children in Oklahoma participate in sports, serves as the host for the gala. Integris health care systems of Oklahoma sponsor the Tisdale Award.
The USBWA has chosen a national freshman of the year since the 1988-89 season when LSU’s Chris Jackson was the recipient. The award was named for Wayman Tisdale in 2011 and other notable winners of the national freshman of the year award include Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Jason Kidd and Chris Webber. Duke’s Jahlil Okafor won the award last season.
The late Wayman Tisdale was a three-time USBWA All-American at the University of Oklahoma and in 1983 was the first freshman ever to be named a first-team All-American by the USBWA. Following a stint on the 1984 U.S. Olympic basketball team, he played 12 seasons in the NBA before retiring in 1997 to focus on a blossoming jazz music career. In March 2007, he was diagnosed with cancer and, following a courageous and difficult battle that included the amputation of his right leg in 2008, he passed away in May 2009.