Creighton basketball got a preseason honor Friday when Oswin Erhunmwunse was named to the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award watch list. The list includes 20 players, putting the Creighton center among the nation’s early candidates at his position.
The watch list is the preseason positional pool for the award, and Erhunmwunse’s inclusion puts him in a group built around rim protection and production in the paint. That is the same lane Massamba Diop entered Friday for Gonzaga, one of the other 20 players on the list after he committed to Gonzaga over St. John’s in April and arrived with a résumé that already stood out.
Diop averaged 13.6 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game at Arizona State while starting all 33 games, shooting 56.9% from the field and ranking second in the Big 12 with 69 total blocks. He also ranked third among college basketball freshmen in blocks, reached 22 points in a 104-76 loss to BYU and had 10 rebounds in two Big 12 games against Cincinnati and Baylor. Those numbers explain why centers land on a watch list before the season has settled into a rhythm: the award leans on production at the rim, and block totals carry real weight.
But the cleanest numbers do not always tell the full story. Diop had four points and five rebounds in Gonzaga's 76-72 exhibition loss at Arkansas on Saturday, a quiet outing that followed a season-high seven blocks in Arizona State's 95-89 home loss to Colorado and came before he answered with 10 points, five rebounds, one block and one steal against NAIA Lewis-Clark State on Wednesday. For Erhunmwunse, the significance is simpler right now: he is in the 20-player conversation, and the next step is whether that early recognition becomes something more once the season starts to sort the contenders from the rest.
