Mark Sears and Alabama basketball enter the upcoming 2024-25 season with justifiably high expectations.
This week alone, the Crimson Tide appeared at No. 2 in the preseason AP Top 25 and was picked to win the SEC while Sears was named the preseason SEC player of the year.
On Tuesday, Alabama's star guard picked up yet another honor.
REQUIRED READING: Alabama basketball's Mark Sears 'unanimous' preseason All-America first-team pick for CBS
Sears has been named CBS Sports' preseason national player of the year , beating out the likes of Duke freshman phenom Cooper Flagg and Kansas big man Hunter Dickinson for the distinction.
The nod comes one day after Sears was the only unanimous inclusion on CBS' preseason all-America first team.
As part of the unveiling of Sears as the outlet's national player of the year, CBS' Matt Norlander wrote :
"It's true that big men have been putting on something of a renaissance in college basketball in the past few years. They'll still control a lot of the attention; it could be that Cooper Flagg, Hunter Dickinson, Ryan Kalkbrenner or Johni Broome wind up as the best player in college basketball. But none of those guys will have the ball in their hands as much as Sears. It's for that reason — and because of the system that Oats runs, which ranked second in offensive efficiency last year with Sears toggling the controls — that we're going with the guy who wears No. 1 for Alabama to be the No. 1 player in college hoops for the next five-plus months."
The Muscle Schoals native was a consensus second-team all-American last season, averaging 21.5 points, four assists and 1.6 steals per game while shooting 43.6% from 3-point range for a 25-win Alabama team.
He saved his best for the NCAA tournament, putting up 24.2 points, 5.2 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game while helping lead the Tide to its first-ever Final Four. In doing so, he was named the most outstanding player of the tournament's west region.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Alabama's Mark Sears named preseason national player of the year by CBS Sports
