Holiday honors: New Jersey’s midseason MVP, breakout star and more
As college basketball’s holiday break nears, it’s time to pick a Midseason MVP, breakout player of the year, top transfer and more.
Well, next week is Christmas Eve. I apologize if I’m the first one to warn you about this fact. As soon as this publishes I’ll be heading out to complete my Christmas shopping.
For the third year running, I’m ringing in the season with my “holiday honors” column, taking stock of the first six weeks of the college hoops season by highlighting several of New Jersey’s top performers and glancing over the big picture so far.
Programming note before I dive in: I’m covering games Wednesday and Saturday, meaning you can expect (free) newsletters on Thursday and Sunday morning before I take a week off for Christmas. I’m giving away much of today’s for free, as well, but paid subscribers will be able to read the entire column.
Enough intro. Let’s pick a Midseason MVP, breakout player of the year, top transfer, top defender and more. Enjoy!
Midseason MVP: Dylan Harper, Rutgers
This selection felt too obvious at first, so I started seriously considering the competition. Xaivian Lee had the first triple-double in Princeton’s recorded history and is putting up 15.8 points, 5.7 rebounds, 5.5 assists and a 40% rate from three. Then there was Abdi Bashir Jr., who scored 38 points with 10 3-pointers at Rutgers, 28 points at Seton Hall and 26 points at Princeton.
If we want to lean into the New Jersey identity of this award, Monmouth’s sophomore guard put up some of the best games we’ve seen at the RAC, the Rock and Jadwin Gymnasium all season. And if Monmouth had gone 3-0 or 2-1 in those games instead of 1-2, there could have been a very strong argument for Bashir here.
Then this happened:
Let’s not overcomplicate. There’s no question who is the best, the most dynamic and the most valuable college basketball player in the state this season. Dylan Harper is all that and a bag of chips. He’s challenging Cooper Flagg for the top spot in the 2025 NBA draft class. In the parlance of the younger generation – and I cannot believe I’m letting myself type this – he is him.
Ace Bailey is going to have a fine season at Rutgers and make some huge plays in the coming weeks. His draft stock is going to remain high. But there’s no question this has been Harper’s team from the jump. He’s the No. 3 scorer in Division I, hitting 20 points in nine of 11 games while shooting 52% from the field and 36.4% from three. He dropped 37 on Alabama in regulation. He’s made plays for his teammates on top of getting shots for himself; he’s had his moments on defense. People much smarter than I am about basketball are calling him the complete package as a point guard prospect.
I’ve already written some prose about Harper this week in trying to conjure the prevailing mood around the program following his game-winner against Seton Hall. I’m also skipping a “Freshman of the Year” award this season because it would be redundant. That’s the level of skill we’re seeing out of him as an 18-year-old: Minds are blown, plans are altered and history is written. Guarden State’s Midseason MVP award is a footnote among the many, many honors coming Dylan Harper’s way.
Runners-up: Abdi Bashir Jr., Monmouth; Xaivian Lee, Princeton; Terrence Brown, FDU
Breakout player of the year: Abdi Bashir Jr., Monmouth
After a loss to Rutgers in which he set a Monmouth single-game record for 3-pointers made, the first thing Bashir said was that he wished it had come in a win.
So after he shot 11-for-19 from the field and 6-for-9 from three on a supposedly good Seton Hall defense, guiding the Hawks to their first win of the season, I asked Bashir how it felt for his stellar game to come in service of a victory. I was impressed with his answer.
“It feels good. Obviously beating a high-major team for your first win, it feels good,” Bashir said. “But there’s more than just me. Obviously I’m a good player but the whole team, the way they trust me, it just allows me to be even better of a player than I really am. I work on all types of shots, all these different moves and everything, so I have the confidence in myself and it’s at an all-time high. I try not to let the outside noise get to me, just try to stay with the team. They believe in me so much. …
“I just stay blessed, stay prayed up and control what I can and let God control the rest, and that’s what I try to do. But I’m representing a lot. I’m representing my last name. I’m representing a whole country. There’s no Somali Division I basketball players. There’s only one, there’s a young guy at Arizona State, and my twin brother (at Casper College in Wyoming) and all of us, we’re just trying to represent. I’m trying to represent a whole country, so I wear that on my sleeve every day.”
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