Florida senior point guard Chris Chiozza earned a pair of honors in SEC men’s basketball awards announced Tuesday.
Chiozza was named to the All-SEC first team and also made the All-SEC defensive team based on votes by coaches throughout the league.
“It’s a great accomplishment — something I didn’t think I would do,” Chiozza said. “My last three years, my goal was to be on the defensive team. I told coach that at the beginning of the year. That’s a great feeling to have to know that I set that goal and got it. I’m just going to try and come out there and play defense like that every night.”
The 6-foot senior from Memphis averaged 11 points per game and an SEC-best 6.1 assists per game. He’s also second in the SEC in steals at 1.9 pg. He broke UF’s all-time assist during Saturday’s 80-67 win over Kentucky and is at 551 career assists and counting.
No other Gator earned postseason honors. Tennessee coach Rick Barnes earned SEC coach of the year, while Tennessee sophomore forward Grant Williams was named SEC player of the year. Votes were cast by all 14 league coaches.
“I’m a little surprised,” Chiozza said. “We definitely got some guys on here that deserve to get some awards at the end of the year. If I could choose, I would pick all our guys. That’s why they don’t let me choose the teams.”
In the AP (media) All-SEC selections, Chiozza was named to the second team, with Barnes coach of the year and Georgia forward Yante Maten as player of the year. Chiozza also was named to the USBWA’s All-District IV team, which is composed of the top 10 players from Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi.
Third-seed Florida will open the SEC Tournament on Friday night in St. Louis (9:30 p.m. ET, SEC Network) against either 6 seed Arkansas, 11 seed South Carolina or 14 seed Ole Miss.
Redshirt freshman forward Dontay Bassett was checked by doctors on Monday and is making progress, but has yet to be cleared from concussion protocol since suffering a a head injury Feb. 27 at Alabama. Bassett is questionable for UF’s SEC Tournament opening game.
Here’s complete list of the 2018 SEC Men’s Basketball coaches postseason awards:
First Team All-SEC
Jaylen Barford, Arkansas
Chris Chiozza, Florida
Yante Maten, Georgia
Kevin Knox, Kentucky
Kassius Robertson, Missouri
Chris Silva, South Carolina
Grant Williams, Tennessee
Tyler Davis, Texas A&M
Second Team All-SEC
Collin Sexton, Alabama
Daryl Macon, Arkansas
Bryce Brown, Auburn
Jared Harper, Auburn
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Kentucky
Quinndary Weatherspoon, Miss. State
Admiral Schofield, Tennessee
Jeff Roberson, Vanderbilt
All-Freshman Team
Collin Sexton, Alabama
Daniel Gafford, Arkansas
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Kentucky
Kevin Knox, Kentucky
Tremont Waters, LSU
Nick Weatherspoon, Miss. State
Jontay Porter, Missouri
TJ Starks, Texas A&M
All-Defensive Team
Donta Hall, Alabama
Anfernee McLemore, Auburn
Chris Chiozza, Florida
Chris Silva, South Carolina
Robert Williams, Texas A&M
Coach of the Year: Rick Barnes, Tennessee
Player of the Year: Grant Williams, Tennessee
Scholar-Athlete of the Year: Juwan Parker, Georgia
Co-Freshman of the Year: Collin Sexton, Alabama & Kevin Knox, Kentucky
Co-Sixth-Man of the Year: Jontay Porter, Missouri & Lamonté Turner, Tennessee
Co-Defensive Player of the Year: Chris Silva, South Carolina & Robert Williams, Texas A&M
Great news for Chiozza. He has obviously worked very hard and deserves the accolades!
Congrats to Cheez. I think Hudson deserves to be on the second team. Does anybody agree? I know bf (big fool) is steaming because Mike didn’t get coach of the year.
The glaring absence of other Florida players on these SEC Team lists validates what a great job Mike White did with this team! Egor & Jalen were so important to the success this team had, but only played this year. At times, this team performed so well against seemingly more talented opponents. For this reason I ( & seemingly many others) were so frustrated that the losses seem to result from poor decision making & “bad” basketball plays at key moments of the game & frequently against opponents that they had outplayed for significant parts of the game. To let these games “get away” was very maddening! I can only imagine how the players must have felt. However, this team also seemed to function at a much higher level than the collective individual talent. I think the players & coach should receive some accolades for this. Go Gators. And please don’t let the “ranked jinx” get you in St. Louis. I will be traveling from Michigan to cheer you on!