Texas Tech sophomore JT Toppin named Big 12 Player of the Year

For just the second time in program history, a Texas Tech men's basketball player has been named the Big 12 Player of the Year. Sophomore JT Toppin earned that honor on Monday after putting up 18.1 points and 9.3 rebounds per game in his first season as a Red Raider.

Last season, the Dallas, Texas native was the Mountain West Conference Freshman of the Year while playing for the New Mexico Lobos. Now, he's taken his game to another level despite stepping up in competition and doing battle in one of the best conferences in the nation.

The forward appeared in 27 games this season. He helped the Red Raiders to an overall record of 24-7 and a 15-5 mark in Big 12 play, which was good enough to earn Tech the No. 2 seed in the Big 12 Tournament, an event that will be held this week in Kanas City.

Toppin has been a nearly unstoppable offensive force. He has scored 20 or more points 13 times and he was held below 10 points in only five games (one of which was the contest at Houston when he was ejected after a puzzling flagrant-2 foul just four minutes into the contest).

What's more, Toppin was a force on the glass. Tech's leading rebounder this season, he had 14 games with 10 or more boards in the regular season.

Another stat that highlights just how dominant Toppin was this season is "Player Efficiency Rating" (PER), a statistic that measures per-minute production for a player across all the statistical categories. According to SportsReference.com, an average PER score for a player is 15.0. Toppin, though, led the Big 12 with a PER of 32.8.

Toppin is the second player in Tech history to win Big 12 Player of the Year honors. In 2018-19, Lubbock native Jarrett Culver received that award. That year, he posted 18.5 points and 6.4 rebounds per game. What's interesting is that, like Toppin, Culver was a sophomore when winning the conference's top individual award.

Toppin and the Red Raiders are off until Thursday night, thanks to earning a double-bye into the Big 12 Tournament quarterfinals. Now, the hope is that his exceptional regular season will carry over into the postseason as Tech looks to make a deep run in the Big Dance once again.