Rakeem Christmas blocks out all of the outside stuff.

The Associated Press Top 25 polls, weekly awards, power rankings, watch lists. That stuff.

But as Christmas dominated Clemson in a 13-point Syracuse loss on Saturday, it was hard for the rest of us not to think about the John R. Wooden Award midseason watch list that was released last Wednesday.

Twenty-five players were named candidates for college basketball’s most prestigious individual award. Christmas wasn’t one of them — his 18.3 points and nine rebounds per game weren’t quite good enough.

“The team isn’t rated. If we were in the Top 10 he’d be getting a lot of attention,” head coach Jim Boeheim said after SU beat Wake Forest on Tuesday, the night before the watch list was released.

“It’s that simple, the same thing every year.”

Yet it’s not like Christmas and the Orange (13-5, 4-1 Atlantic Coast) are playing a mid-major schedule. The ACC is arguably the nation’s best conference and Christmas is getting harder and harder to ignore. And while a mid-year watch list doesn’t earn any team or player an edge on the scoreboard or in the standings, the omission of Christmas — who was named the ACC’s player of the week Monday for the second time this season — from the Wooden watch list is ludicrous.

He is the only player who ranks in the ACC’s top five in scoring, rebounding, blocked shots and field-goal percentage. And that’s after averaging 5.8 points per game last year.

“What I told our guys prior to the game, ‘I have a hard time believing that anybody in this league has improved more in the last year and a half than (Christmas) has,’” Virginia Tech head coach Buzz Williams said of his team’s game against SU on Jan. 3.

To accurately assess whether Christmas should be on the Wooden watch list, let’s take a look at his competition.

There are 16 guards and nine forwards on the Wooden watch list.

Of the 25 players, only six are averaging more points per game than Christmas through Sunday. Of the nine forwards, only Duke’s Jahlil Okafor and Arkansas’ Bobby Portis are averaging more — and by just fractions of a point.

Christmas separates himself even more with his rebounding, as just three players of the 25 are averaging more per game. That’s Louisville’s Montrezl Harrell (9.2), Okafor (9.3) and LSU’s Jordan Mickey (10.4). Many perceive Okafor to be the midseason frontrunner yet his numbers are nearly identical to Christmas’ despite playing three fewer minutes per game.

That’s not to say that Christmas and Okafor are one in the same. But it is to say that it’s hard to imagine a group to be sane if it doesn’t consider Christmas as one of the 24 players that follow the Duke freshman.

“He’s probably the best center in the country, that’s all I can say,” Boeheim said after SU’s loss to Clemson. “… They’re doubling him every time, they’re fouling him on every play and he just keeps playing unbelievable.”

Boeheim’s assessment of Christmas’ national attention is spot on. Syracuse is scratching for Top 25 votes and hasn’t cracked the poll since the second week of the season. Only five players on the watch list were on four-loss teams when the candidates were released.

Team success is how No. 1 Kentucky’s (17-0) Willie Cauley-Stein cracked the 25 while averaging 9.6 points and 6.7 rebounds; how No. 2 Virginia’s (17-0) Justin Anderson did with 14.5 and 4.4 rebounds per contest; and how No. 9 Iowa State’s (13-3) Georges Niang did with 14.9 points and 5.4 rebounds.

But the Orange’s ongoing struggle, as a team that has lost forwards Chris McCullough and DaJuan Coleman for the season and can’t find consistent secondary scoring options, only amplifies Christmas’ dominance.

Against Clemson, Christmas was constantly double-teamed and scored the Orange’s first eight points on his way to scoring a game-high 21 on 10-of-13 shooting. The rest of SU shot 2-for-15 from 3 and 11-for-44 from the field.

During a season in which he has drawn the full attention of opposing defenses, Christmas has scored in single digits just once in 18 games and has six double-doubles. While there are other things that accentuate his overall performance — like how he has fouled out just twice and has been a rock in the middle of Boeheim’s zone — his raw numbers already set him far apart.

Christmas isn’t dominating because of his team’s mediocrity; he’s producing in spite of it. A final Wooden watch list will be released on March 7 and we’ll see if the experts can figure that out.

Until then, SU’s next game — Tuesday at 7 p.m. against Boston College — is always Christmas’ next chance to show that he belongs in the thick of the national conversation.

Not on the outside looking in.

“He’s not in the Top 25 in the country,” Boeheim said sarcastically after the Clemson game. “He can’t be that good.”

Published on January 20, 2015 at 12:20 am