By John Shinn
Oklahoma's Willie Warren has big expectations for this coming season. The Sporting News has bigger expectations for Warren.
Friday, the magazine named the Sooner guard its preseason player of the year for 2009-10 season.
Warren, sophomore who is considered by many college basketball analysts to be college basketball's best shooting guard, is coming off a 2008-09 campaign that saw him claim Big 12 Freshman of the Year honors and earn freshman All-America acclaim.
He averaged 14.6 points and 3.1 assists per contest last year for a 30-6 OU squad that reached the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. He scored at least 20 points seven times and topped the 30-point mark twice. He also set school freshman records for starts (34) and 3-point makes (67), and shot a team-high .372 from behind the arc.
"I'm not going to lie, being named preseason player of the year is pretty cool," Warren said Friday. "I'm extremely honored by it. I'm just looking forward to a fun year with my teammates and coaches. We've got a lot of really talented players and we're going to have a great season."
Warren scored a game-high 23 points in the Sooners' exhibition victory over the University of British Columbia Tuesday.
Only one player in school history scored more points as a true freshman than Warren did last year and that was Wayman Tisdale in 1982-83. Warren finished the season with 525 points and is looking to join Tisdale, Alvan Adams and Blake Griffin as the only Sooners to score 1,000 points by the end of their true sophomore season.
Warren will look to follow Blake Griffin as national player of the year. Griffin was last season's unanimous honoree after averaging 22.7 points and 14.4 rebounds, and shooting a Big 12-record .654 from the field.
John Shinn 366-3536 jshinn@normantranscript.com
