Raivio shares POY honors

Did this year’s West Coast Conference men’s basketball awards merit a recount?

One of the winners wondered as much Tuesday.

“I’m very honored – anybody would be,” said WCC coach of the year Dick Davey of Santa Clara. “But some of those guys might have put their ballots in a little too soon. If they’d waited longer, I’m not sure I would have got that honor.”

Davey noted that a number of WCC coaches voted before the final weekend of play, when Gonzaga used a road sweep to vault past his Broncos – who blew a one-game lead by losing twice – for a seventh consecutive regular-season championship.

That may be why Gonzaga’s Derek Raivio wound up sharing the player of the year award with Santa Clara’s Sean Denison – and why Davey, in his final year with the Broncos, was the first coach of the year since 2000 whose team didn’t win the WCC’s regular-season title.

Raivio became GU’s seventh consecutive POY winner after winning the conference’s scoring title (18.0 points per game) and leading the nation in free-throw percentage (95.5), having a streak of 56 straight made free throws halted on Monday night. He was also among the WCC’s top 15 in six other statistical categories.

Denison, a 6-foot-11 forward, averaged 10.9 points – 18th in the conference and the lowest of any POY winner in more than 25 years.

Raivio, however, wasn’t interested in the vagaries of the voting.

“It’s a tremendous honor, but I give a lot of tribute to my teammates,” said the senior from Vancouver, Wash. “I don’t think I won it myself. I felt I had a pretty solid year, though I really feel I had better games outside the conference than during the conference season. But it was a goal of mine to win the league as a team and be the league MVP, and I’m happy that we were able to do both.”

He follows Casey Calvary (2001), Dan Dickau (2002), Blake Stepp (2003-2004), Ronny Turiaf (2005) and Adam Morrison in the string of Gonzaga winners. Bakari Hendrix, Jeff Brown and John Stockton are also former Bulldog POYs.

“I’ve had to wait my turn behind Blake and Ronny, J.P. (Batista) and Mo,” Raivio said. “There have been some great players here.”

Raivio wasn’t the only Zag honored.

He was joined by backcourt mate Jeremy Pargo on the All-WCC first team, while Matt Bouldin was voted to the all-freshman team. Senior Sean Mallon was accorded honorable mention.

There was another Spokane connection – Santa Clara guard Danny Pariseau, a Shadle Park graduate who played his first three years of college basketball at Eastern Washington, was voted newcomer of the year after leading the WCC in assists. He and Denison were also on the all-conference team, along with teammate Scott Dougherty.

Rounding out that group were Portland’s Darren Cooper (another EWU transfer), Diamon Simpson of Saint Mary’s, San Francisco’s Alan Wiggins Jr., Loyola Marymount’s Matthew Knight and San Diego’s Gyno Pomare. Loyola’s Damian Martin was voted defensive player of the year.

Gonzaga coach Mark Few lauded both his all-WCC players, noting that Raivio’s contributions are often “taken for granted” and that Pargo “has had a heck of a year – and it was really important that he come in have that type of year for us to be successful.”

He also had high praise for Davey, who ended Few’s run of six straight coach of the year awards.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am for coach Davey,” Few said. “He’s somebody I always looked up to coming into the profession – and being in the profession. It’s a well-deserved honor.”