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Chaz Lanier becomes first Tennessee player to capture national honor
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Chaz Lanier had a stellar senior season in nearly getting Tennessee to the Final Four, and he was rewarded on Final Four weekend by capturing the Jerry West Award, which is given annually to the best shooting guard in college basketball.
The award, which is named after the late Basketball Hall of Famer and 1959 Final Four Most Outstanding Player, is in its 11th year. And for the first time, the award went to a player at Tennessee, which got to its second straight Elite Eight this season thanks to the wizardry of Lanier, who led the Vols in scoring with 18.0 points per game.
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Lanier beat out fellow SEC shooting guard Tre Johnson of Texas, as well as Arizona’s Caleb Love, Baylor’s VJ Edgecombe and Memphis’s PJ Haggerty for the honor.
Lanier’s reaction to winning the prestigious award was priceless on Saturday. He would’ve rather been playing with his Volunteer teammates in San Antonio for the right to play for a national title, but it was a hefty consolation prize to get the news like he did.
This marks the second straight season that a Tennessee star player has earned a spot in the Naismith Starting 5. Dalton Knecht won the 2023-2024 Julius Erving Award as the nation’s best small forward.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
