A consensus two-time All-American who scored 1,980 points and pulled down 1,301 rebounds, both No. 2 all-time at UD, May was marveling about the Flyers this year and especially Pollard, the 6-foot-6 sophomore forward from Chicago’s South Side.
“To see Kendall Pollard get in and get a MAN-sized rebound and then turn around and go charging down the court, I always think, ‘Boy, I wish I could have done that,’ ” May said.
“Oh man, is he fun to watch!”
The rest of the A-10 certainly watched, as well, but I don’t think they would classify 40 minutes of Kendall Pollard as fun.
If he wasn’t exploding to the rim and dunking on them, he was swatting their shots out of the sky or grabbing those “MAN-sized” rebounds and then turning and dribbling down the court like a loaded dump truck barreling down a bumpy mountain road.
“He is fun to watch,” said Jordan Sibert, the UD senior guard who was named a first team all-conference Tuesday. “He’s a young guy full of energy. It’s been phenomenal to watch him grow this year. He stepped up like a man.”
As a freshman last season, Pollard averaged 1.8 points in conference play, 1.8 rebounds and .3 blocked shots.
Going into the Flyers’ A-10 quarterfinal game Friday in Brooklyn, N.Y., he’s averaging 13.8 points, 5.5 rebounds and 1.1 blocks in the league.
He has improved his free-throw percentage by 30 points and leads the A-10. He’s second in the league in field-goal percentage, making 60 percent of his shots.
With numbers like that, it’s no surprise he was awarded the league’s Chris Daniels Most Improved Player Award on Tuesday. Only two other Flyers have been similarly honored, Coby Turner in 1998 and Chris Johnson in 2010.
The award is named after the beloved 6-foot-10 Dayton center who died of an undetected heart ailment in February 1996 during his redshirt senior season.
When he died — soon after going into convulsions in the small Lowes Street house he shared with a teammate in the student ghetto — Daniels had been having the greatest season of his UD career. After averaging 3.8 points a game the year before, he had upped his output to 13 points a game and his 67.9 percent field-goal accuracy was second best in the nation.
Although this season has been challenging for the undermanned Flyers, that one was worse. The death crushed the players, who had to travel to New York and play Fordham two days later. The players wore black patches bearing Daniels’ No. 33 and they printed his name on their shoes.
The team, the campus and the fans at UD Arena had seemed to embrace the big man from Columbus and that’s why the Chris Daniels awards — one given at UD and another by the A-10 — are considered so special.
“I’m really proud he won the Chris Daniels Award,” Flyers coach Archie Miller said of Pollard’s league recognition. “The most improved award is maybe the most important award, one as a coach you really appreciate.
“Kendall is a stud, a guy who is a very tough cover. He’s very versatile. We rode him at games at times. We needed him. As important as Jordan is, as important as Dyshawn is (Dyshawn Pierre won second team A-10 honors), Kendall is as important as any of them.”
Last season people got a taste of what Pollard could do when he scored a season-high 12 points off the bench against Stanford in the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16 game in Memphis.
“That gave me a little more confidence that I can go out and compete on the highest level,” Pollard said.
He talked about the hard work he had done in the offseason in hopes of making an impact this year:
“I came into the season expecting bigger numbers with the amount of playing time I might get. Last year I played behind Devin Oliver, a guy who played almost 30 minutes a night.”
He started this season coming off the bench again, but then in mid-December the team’s two 6-9 juniors, Devon Scott and Jalen Robinson, got kicked out of the program and suddenly Pollard was thrust into a starting role.
“There was a sense of urgency for everyone then — including the coaches,” he said. “Everyone had to bring their A game. For me it was kind of self-motivation. I knew I was going to be inserted into the starting lineup so I knew I had to bring it. Someone had to step up.”
Although it wasn’t on the same scale, Pollard has been center stage before. He played on three Illinois state championship teams at Simeon Career Academy in Chicago.
That hoops powerhouse has produced a long line of basketball talent, including Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose and Pollard’s teammate Jabari Parker, who was an All-American at Duke before the Milwaukee Bucks made the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft.
Simeon also claims NBA players like Nick Anderson and Bobby Simmons, several guys who starred in college and prep All-American Ben Wilson, who was murdered on the eve of his senior season.
Asked if he was moving up the list behind Parker and Rose, Pollard smiled and shook his head: “I wouldn’t put myself up there, but the rest of us are all working to get where those guys are.”
Miller, in fact, said Pollard worked enough this season that “arguably he could have been on any of those all-conference teams, in my opinion. He was that important to us.”
Pollard said he wasn’t surprised he won the Most Improved award: “After a few games in the conference I kinda figured I was gonna win it. … I kinda wanted to be on the all-conference team, but that’s all right.”
When it was suggested that, as a sophomore, he still had two more years for that, he shook his head and slapped away that idea like an opponent’s feeble layup attempt:
“No, I can actually make the (A-10) all-tournament team this week!”
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