Here's one man's ballot for the Wooden Award. Before I get to how I voted, let's go over the criteria and rules. First, every voter was asked to vote for five players from a list of twenty and rank them from one to five. Choice #1 was your player of the year and got five points. The rest of the players made up your All-America team; player #2 received 4 points, player #3 3 points, and so on. There were six criteria for the award. In brief: players must play at an accredited NCAA school, must maintain a 2.0 GPA on their way to a degree, must "exhibit strength of character, both on and off the court", must be team players, must contribute on offense and defense and should be judged over the course of the entire season.

First, let me get to the players I immediately crossed off my list: Amy Jaeschke of Northwestern, Kalisha Keene of Michigan State, Ta'Shia Phillips of Xavier, and Shekinna Stricklen of Tennessee. In the case of the first two, their teams were simply not good enough to be worthy of consideration. In the case of the latter two, neither was even the best player on their own team. My next set of eliminations were Danielle Adams of Texas A&M, Skylar Diggins of Notre Dame, Victoria Dunlap of Kentucky, Jantel Lavender of Ohio State, Danielle Robinson of Oklahoma, Shenise Johnson of Miami, and Sugar Rodgers of Georgetown. These are all tremendously great players and merited consideration. I ultimately passed because while they were the stars of their respective teams, they simply weren't as good as the players I thought were best. Stanford's three players on the ballot-- Jeanette Pohlen, Kayla Pedersen and Nneka Ogwumike-- were all brilliant this year. So much so that they essentially split my Stanford vote, so I chose none of them. The last player I left off was Courtney Vandersloot of Gonzaga, and this is perhaps the one vote I'd reconsider, given the way she dominated in the NCAA tournament.

So my Wooden All-American team, in reverse order, included Dawn Evans of James Madison; Jasmine Thomas of Duke; Amber Harris of Xavier; Maya Moore of UConn; and Brittney Griner of Baylor as my player of the year. I again included Evans on my ballot because of her potent combination of scoring & passing and her once again leading JMU to the NCAA tournament from a tough CAA. No player in the country has had to do more heavy lifting at both ends of the floor than Thomas, who's had more clutch moments this year than any other player. Harris is simply an unstoppable force. Moore is one of the greatest players of all time, truly a 1b to Griner's 1a. I chose Griner because as great as Moore is, Griner has quickly caught up to her in terms of savvy and making dominant, winning plays. Moore at her best is beautiful to watch; Griner at her best is frightening to watch. She's a force like no other in the history of the game.

Notes: The above selections also represent the DWHoops All-American Team and Player of the Year.

Maya Moore was selected Wooden National Player of the Year with 678 votes. She was followed by the first-team Wooden All-Americans Britney Griner (566 votes) , Courtney Vandersloot (283), Jeanette Pohlen (198), and Nnemkadi Ogwumike (185). We congratulate the winners!