LSU’s Waters, Mays, Reid earn postseason honors from SEC coaches

BATON ROUGE – LSU’s Tremont Waters earned Co-Defensive Player of the Year honors and Skylar Mays was named the league’s scholar-athlete on the Southeastern Conference coaches All-SEC selections announced on Tuesday.

Both Waters (1st team) and Mays (2nd team) were named to the All-SEC teams, Waters was named to the All-Defensive team and Naz Reid was named to the All-Freshman team.

The Tigers, champions of the SEC with a 26-5 overall record and 16-2 in the SEC, will play again on Friday at noon in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. The Tigers will play the winner of the Arkansas-Florida game that will be played at noon on Thursday.

Waters, who was also named to the AP media All-SEC first team, was a member of the league freshman team in 2018. He becomes the first Tiger to earn the Defensive POY award in the league since Tyrus Thomas shared the award in 2006. Waters shared the award with Ashton Hagans of Kentucky.

It marks the first time that two LSU players have made the coaches All-SEC teams since the 2014-15 season.

Waters leads the team in scoring at 15.3 points a game while averaging 5.9 assists and 3.1 steals a game. In league play, the sophomore from New Haven, Connecticut is averaging 17.7 points a contest, 6.2 assists and 2.9 steals. He is on pace to set school records in both steals and steals average and is 30 points shy of becoming the 42nd player in LSU history to top 1,000 points. He is number two in the nation in steals average.

For Mays it is a scholar double with Scholar-Athlete of the Year following Monday’s announcement that the junior is a first-team Academic All-America as selected by CoSIDA with a 4.01 GPA in pre-med/kinesiology. He had a scoring average of 13.6 overall and 13.7 in league play. Mays averages 2.3 assists and 1.9 steals per game.

Reid, who is expected to return to action on Friday after missing the finale against Vanderbilt because of injuries sustained at the end of the Florida game on March 6, is averaging 13.3 points per game and 6.9 rebounds overall and 13.9 points per game and 7.8 rebounds in league play.

Here are the complete All-SEC teams and honorees as selected by league coaches (coaches could not vote for their own players):

First Team All-SEC
Daniel Gafford, Arkansas
PJ Washington, Kentucky
Tremont Waters, LSU
Breein Tyree, Ole Miss
Quinndary Weatherspoon, Mississippi St.
Chris Silva, South Carolina
Admiral Schofield, Tennessee
Grant Williams, Tennessee

Second Team All-SEC
Bryce Brown, Auburn
Jared Harper, Auburn
Nicolas Claxton, Georgia
Tyler Herro, Kentucky
Keldon Johnson, Kentucky
Skylar Mays, LSU
Terence Davis, Ole Miss
Jordan Bone, Tennessee

All-Freshman Team
Kira Lewis Jr., Alabama
Isaiah Joe, Arkansas
Andrew Nembhard, Florida
Tyler Herro, Kentucky
Keldon Johnson, Kentucky
Naz Reid, LSU
Reggie Perry, Mississippi State
A.J. Lawson, South Carolina

All-Defensive Team
Donta Hall, Alabama
Daniel Gafford, Arkansas
Ashton Hagans, Kentucky
Tremont Waters, LSU
Chris Silva, South Carolina

Coach of the Year: Kermit Davis, Ole Miss
Player of the Year: Grant Williams, Tennessee
Scholar-Athlete of the Year: Skylar Mays, LSU
Freshman of the Year: Keldon Johnson, Kentucky
Sixth-Man of the Year: Hassani Gravett, South Carolina
Co-Defensive Players of the Year: Tremont Waters, LSU & Ashton Hagans, Kentucky