Thrilling player of the year race down to Buddy Hield, Denzel Valentine

College basketball’s national player of the year race may be headed for a thrilling finish.

Providence’s Kris Dunn and Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine sprinted out of the blocks quickly by excelling during non-conference play. Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield overtook them both with a flurry of midseason scoring barrages and by late January threatened to build an insurmountable lead. Now Valentine is mounting a late charge, leaving the race too close to call just days before the end of the regular season.

The superior scorer unquestionably is Hield, the Bahamas native with the friendly smile and the lethal stroke. The reigning Big 12 player of the year has evolved from a volume-shooting chucker with minimal concept of shot selection to a ruthlessly efficient scorer who boasts unfathomably deep range yet can also blow by a defender who crowds him too tightly.

Hield is averaging 25.3 points per game, second only to Howard’s James Daniel. No other perimeter player in the nation is putting up anywhere close to the scoring numbers he has achieved while also shooting 49.3 percent from the field and a blistering 47.6 percent from behind the arc.

Few players nationally have shined on a big stage the way Hield has this season too. He torched Kansas for 46 points on 23 shots in an epic triple-overtime loss at Allen Fieldhouse on Jan. 4. He thoroughly outplayed future No. 1 draft pick Ben Simmons a few weeks later in Baton Rouge. And finally on Feb. 8, he broke the heart of rival Texas with a late 12-point barrage that culminated with a game-winning last-second 3-pointer.

Hield’s brilliant senior season fueled Oklahoma’s rise into the top 10 in the polls and the thick of the race for a No. 1 seed. The Sooners (23-6, 11-6) appeared to have a chance to snap Kansas’ streak of Big 12 titles until four losses in their last eight games short-circuited those plans.

While Oklahoma has plateaued late in the year, Michigan State has surged. The Spartans (24-5, 11-5) have won eight of their past nine games to ascend to No. 2 in the polls and get back into contention for a No. 1 seed despite a midseason slump brought on by a late-December knee injury suffered by Valentine.

A Lansing native who used to stand outside the Spartans locker room with hats or shirts for players to sign, Valentine has worked diligently to become the guy who today’s Lansing kids line up to see.

Valentine has been at his jack-of-all-trades best during this recent nine-game stretch, averaging 21.8 points, 8.4 assists and 7.7 rebounds. He’s doing all that spending a lot of time out of position as TumTum Nairn’s injury woes have forced Valentine to slide over to point guard rather than being able to play both on and off ball.

What makes Valentine an appealing player of the year candidate is that he can impact a game in more ways than Hield can. He has the deft passing and court vision of a point guard, the size and length of a wing and excellent rebounding ability for someone who’s 6-foot-5. He also is a more reliable defender than Hield is and is able to defend multiple positions.

Since the NCAA first recognized the assist as an official stat in 1983-84, Valentine is the first player in the nation to average 19 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. He’s only the fourth Michigan State player to record a triple-double, a feat he achieved against Kansas and Boston College this season and has nearly pulled off a handful of other times.

Both Valentine and Hield are shoo-ins for first-team All-American honors. Kentucky’s Tyler Ulis, Virginia’s Malcolm Brogdon, Duke’s Grayson Allen, Indiana’s Yogi Ferrell and North Carolina’s Brice Johnson are among the other contenders first-team All-Americans, but none have accomplished quite enough to push their way past Valentine and Hield in the national player of the year race.

So who’s the better choice? To me, Valentine has the slightest edge because of his versatility.

The most explosive scorer in the country is Hield. The most complete player in the country is Valentine.