Arizona Wildcats seniors Solomon Hill and Mark Lyons made the 10-man all-Pac-12 first team that was announced today.
It's a repeat performance for Hill, who made the first team last season and was a first-team honoree in last season's Pac-12 Tournament
"That's pretty good," Hill said. "Just showed my hard work was noticed and it also comes with team success. I think if our team wasn’t in a top half of the conference, I wouldn’t have this award."
Lyons was also a repeat honoree of sorts, having been a third-team all-Atlantic 10 Conference pick last season at Xavier.
"Feels good," Lyons said. "I get to play my natural position. It’s a blessing in disguise to be here. I’m back with my original coach and it’s just been great. The season’s been great."
UA coach Sean Miller said he was "really happy" for both players because of the total seasons they had.
However, the Wildcats did not have a representative on either the Pac-12's five-man all-freshman team or the five-man all-defensive team. Center Kaleb Tarczewski was an honorable mention all-Pac-12 freshman pick, while the five-man freshman team consisted of UCLA's Shabazz Muhammad and Kyle Anderson, ASU's Jahii Carson, Oregon's Damyean Dotson and Colorado's Josh Scott.
"That all-freshmen team is really, really talented," Miller said. "I wouldn’t look at the fact that our freshmen didn’t make it as a negative as much as if you just look at each one of them..."
For example, Miller said he couldn't believe that UCLA guard Jordan Adams didn't make the all-freshman or all-defensive team, when he had Adams as a first-team all-conference pick overall.
Miller said Johnson "certainly" could have made the all-defensive team, which included ASU's Jordan Bachynski and Carrick Felix, Stanford's Josh Huestis, Oregon's Arsalan Kazemi and Colorado's Andre Roberson.
"I’m sure one of the things that hurt him was just the last three weeks of a our team's overall defensive slide," Miller said. "You get grouped into that when things don’t go well so I’m sure that hurt him. He could have been on it very easily."
Cal's Allen Crabbe was named the conference's player of the year, while UCLA's Shabazz Muhammad and ASU's Jahii Carson shared the freshman of the year award. Oregon's Dana Altman was named the conference's coach of the year.
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