Freshman forward Jabari Smith and sophomore center Walker Kessler were named as the SEC’s Freshman of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year, respectively. These honors are voted on the the league’s head coaches once the regular season concludes.
Smith and Kessler combined as the first Auburn players in program history to win this pair of awards. This goes on Smith’s resume behind six Freshman of the Week honors this season, Auburn’s all-time leader for that honor.
In his first and likely only regular season with the Tigers, Smith led the Auburn scoring with an average of 17.1 points per game and shot 43.6% from three. With numbers like those and following names such as Isaac Okoro (2020) and Sharife Cooper (2021), Smith became the third straight Auburn freshman with a spot on the SEC’s All-Freshman team.
Outside of the SEC, Smith was named a second-team All-American by The Sporting News on Monday and first-team All-American by Sports Illustrated on Tuesday, the only freshman named to that list. He is the first Auburn player since 1999 to earn a place on an All-America Team.
Both newcomers to the Auburn squad at the beginning of the season, Kessler and Smith learned how to play together on the fly and did it well.
Kessler, a native of Newnan, Ga., transferred in from North Carolina after playing his freshman season with the Tar Heels, getting significantly lesser results. In his debut season, he averaged 4.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and just 0.9 blocks a game before putting up 11.5 points and 8.2 rebounds a game and becoming the nation's block leader in his sophomore season.
Smith, reigning from Fayetteville, Ga., came in as a highly-touted freshman and has quickly elevated himself to the top of the NBA draft boards with his dominant play. He is projected as one of the top lottery picks in this year's draft and also anticipates additional awards in the postseason, as he is a semifinalist for the John R. Wooden Award and the Karl Malone Power Forward of the Year Award.
The Kessler-Smith duo was also named to the All-SEC first team, earning Auburn a program-high three awards from the conference, with head coach Bruce Pearl’s Conference Coach of the Year award.
Kessler’s defensive award came from a regular season where he set the program’s single-season record for blocked shots (140), rounding out Smith on the front court. He leads NCAA Division I and the SEC in blocked shots, with an average of 4.5 per game, in addition to a team-leading 8.2 rebounds per game and fourth-place steals per game (33).
The big man also earned a place on the SEC’s All-Defensive Team beside names like Jaylin Williams of Arkansas and Oscar Tshiebwe of Kentucky. Kessler became just the second Auburn player to record a triple-double since Kenny Gabriel in 2012 and his pair of triple-doubles are second-most in SEC history, behind only LSU’s Shaquille O’Neal with six.
Kessler also awaits results on some other awards as a finalist for the John R. Wooden Award (with Smith), Naismith Defensive Player of the Year Award, and the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Center of the Year Award.
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Callie Stanford is from Springville, Alabama and is currently a sophomore at Auburn. She has been with The Plainsman since January 2021.
Twitter: @Stanford1Callie
