Syracuse junior Tyus Battle was named a candidate for the Jerry West Award on Tuesday. The award, given out by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, honors the country’s best shooting guard at the end of the season.

Battle tested the NBA Draft waters but returned to SU for a third season. He led the Orange with 19.2 points per game last season. That went along with averaging 39.0 minutes per contest and shooting 39.9 percent from the floor. At SU’s media day on Oct. 12, head coach Jim Boeheim spoke briefly about Battle’s sophomore season.

“Sometimes you forget he had a really good year last year,” Boeheim said. “In spite of a lot of defensive concentration, he had a very good year. He made a lot of big shots in a lot of games.”

There are 20 preseason candidates for the award. Three other ACC teams were represented: Duke by RJ Barrett, Notre Dame by T.J. Gibbs and Virginia by Kyle Guy.

This will be the fifth year the award is given out. The previous four winners were Ohio State’s D’Angelo Russell (2015), Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield (2016), Kentucky’s Malik Monk (2017) and Purdue’s Carsen Edwards (2018).

The award winner will be announced at The College Basketball Awards in Los Angeles on April 12, 2019.

Syracuse opens its regular season on Nov. 6 against Eastern Washington, after exhibitions on Oct. 25 against the College of St. Rose and Oct. 31 against Le Moyne.

Published on October 16, 2018 at 3:29 pm

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