UNI’s Tuttle named MVC Player of the Year

CEDAR FALLS - Seth Tuttle hasn't exactly flown under the radar this season.

Leading the No. 11/12 Northern Iowa men's basketball team in points (15.6), rebounds (6.6), assists (3.3) and blocks (0.6) per game while guiding the team to a 27-3 overall and 16-2 conference record will do that.

So it was no surprise the Sheffield native was awarded the Larry Bird Trophy as the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year on Tuesday. His consistent performance and leadership have thrust him into the national spotlight as the face of the Panthers.

'Those things were really special for me,” Tuttle said in a conference call Tuesday. 'At times it was pretty unbelievable for them to be talking about myself or talking about our team the way they were on GameDay sometimes and during other games. For them to mention Northern Iowa and then for them to mention what I was doing individually, it was great to hear.

'It just kept fueling us to keep building forward and keep doing what we were doing.”

Sprinkled throughout answers to a range of questions about him, Tuttle rarely let it be only about him.

True to form, he stuck to the message of getting things done as a team, and how the attention he's gotten has been a part of something much bigger. Not getting caught up and keeping his eyes focused forward was difficult but necessary.

'I think I've been here long enough and being a senior now, I'm mature enough to understand that everything people say or their opinions about you, they don't change anything your team has accomplished or what you're trying to get done as a unit,” Tuttle said. 'Basically we've been taking everything everyone's said about us, we're putting it in a box to the side so we can come back to it after the season and be really happy about it. But right now we're focused on getting prepared for St. Louis and what's to come afterwards. Basically we're just trying to stay focused on the real prize.”

None of that means he isn't grateful or humbled by winning the top individual award the MVC has to offer.

He was open about the fact that winning this award has been atop his list of individual goals as far back as his freshman year, when he was the MVC Freshman of the Year. Winning a conference championship and advancing in the NCAA Tournament have always been the goals paramount in his and his teammates' minds, but those individual goals were what pushed him in the off-season as much as anything else.

'I've set basketball goals throughout my whole life, and when I got here my freshman year, this was one of the goals I had that I really wanted to accomplish,” Tuttle said. 'It's a big deal for me, and something I'm really proud of.

'When you're sitting there in the summer - in the off-season, working out - you've got to have some individual goals as things to help motivate you and push you to keep working hard. This was mine over the last couple of years. It was what I wanted and what I was really trying to push for.”

Tuttle hasn't yet had the time or the inclination to grasp the full scope of what he's done as an individual, and the company he keeps by winning the Player of the Year.

He's the third Panther to win, joining Jason Daisy in 1997 and Adam Koch in 2010. He's also just the third player in conference history to win Freshman of the Year and Player of the Year in their career, following Ashraf Amaya of Southern Illinois and Doug McDermott of Creighton. Additionally, he's the first player from a non-regular season championship team to win POY since Kyle Korver for Creighton in 2003.

'I haven't really had a chance to look back that far, but I've known the names that have won it the last couple years, and to be able to be among those players, it means a lot to me,” Tuttle said. 'There's some really good players and some all-time greats that have won this award, so from myself to have my name sitting right next to them, it really means a lot.”

Tuttle and UNI are next in action on Friday at the MVC Tournament, facing either Drake or Bradley at 6:05 p.m. at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis.

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