LSU freshman Ben Simmons won’t be eligible to win the Wooden Award for academic reasons.
According to ESPN’s Jeff Goodman, the Tigers star was not certified by the school because he didn’t meet the academic requirements. An LSU spokesman confirmed this to ESPN, as did head coach Johnny Jones.
“From what I was told, he didn’t meet all of the requirements,” Jones said. “He wasn’t certified by the school to be on the ballot.”
One of the requirements for Wooden Award qualification is a 2.0 cumulative grade point average. Simmons started LSU’s February 20th game on the bench for an academic issue as well, so it’s clear that the near-certain one and done player is struggling in the classroom.
Simmons will be in the NBA next year, so he’s not really focusing on his degree, and he’ll probably survive without this award, too. One NBA legend has already compared him to LeBron James. You can bet that if the rules still allowed him to, Simmons would have done as LeBron did and skipped this whole college thing altogether.
