Thomas Newcomer, 1st Team; Watford, Smart on USA Today Network Squad

BATON ROUGE – It is Southeastern Conference Tournament week and with that the various award groups are handing out their honors starting Monday morning with the All-SEC awards from the USA Today Sports Network, which is voted on by the 11 writers who cover SEC teams for the Network. 

Freshman Cameron Thomas was named the Newcomer of the Year by the writers and was the only unanimous selection of the 11 writers to the first team. 

Also named to the first team was sophomore forward Trendon Watford.

Junior guard Javonte Smart was named to the five-player second team.

The Tigers won their final two games of the regular season to finish at 16-8 and 11-6 in the SEC. LSU is the third seed in the tournament, the only school in the league to have a double bye top four seed in 2019, 2020 and 2021. LSU will play its first game Friday evening at approximately 8:15 p.m. against the winner of Thursday’s game between Ole Miss and South Carolina.

Here is the complete team as selected by the SEC writers of the USA Today Sports Network:

First Team
Cameron Thomas, LSU
Scotty Pippen, Jr., Vanderbilt
Moses Moody, Arkansas
Herbert Jones, Alabama
Trendon Watford, LSU

Second Team
AJ Lawson, South Carolina
Javonte Smart, LSU
Sahvir Wheeler, Georgia
Dylan Disu, Vanderbilt
Justin Smith, Arkansas

Honorable Mention (at least 4 votes)
Tre Mann, Florida; Tolu Smith, Mississippi State; John Petty, Jr., Alabama; Jeremiah Tilmon, Missouri

Coach of the Year – Nate Oats, Alabama
Player of the Year – Herbert Jones, Alabama
Newcomer of the Year – Cameron Thomas, LSU
Defensive Player of the Year – Herbert Jones, Alabama