Arizona Wildcats Guard Stars on College Basketball Award Watch Lists
Arizona Wildcats guard Caleb Love was selected preseason All-Big 12 a couple of weeks ago by the league’s coaches.
This week Love has been racking up more postseason honors in the form of awards watch lists.
Love, the fifth-year collegiate guard who is returning to the Wildcats for a second season, most recently was named to the National Association of Basketball Coaches preseason watch list for the 2025 NABC Division I Player of the Year award.
Earlier this week Love was named to the 2024-25 Naismith Men’s Player of the Year Watch List. He was also named to the 2025 Jerry West Award watch list, the award given to the nation’s top shooting guard. He was a finalist for this award last year.
Earlier this week he was also named among the Top 100 players in college basketball by ESPN.
And, he was named a first-team preseason Associated Press All-American earlier this month.
Last season Love was the Pac-12 Player of the Year after he finished with a team-leading 18 points per game. He also led the team in 3-pointers made (92), field goals (218) and free throws (120).
He was named a first-team All-American by ESPN, a second-team All-American by NABC, USBWA and College Hoops Today, and a third-team All-American by The Sporting News, Associated Press and CBS Sports.
Along with earning the Pac-12 honor and finishing in the final five for the West award, he was inducted into the Arizona Basketball Ring of Honor and was named to the Wooden Award All-America team.
Love contemplated going to the NBA before opting to return for one more season.
Before Arizona, he played three seasons with North Carolina, where he was an all-ACC honorable mention selection twice and an ACC All-Freshman team pick his first season. He scored 1,476 points (14.6 ppg) for the Tar Heels and left with 200 3-pointers, which is eighth in UNC history.
He helped North Carolina advance to the national championship game in 2022, scoring 30 points against UCLA in the Sweet 16 and 28 points (22 in the second half) against Duke in the national semifinal game. The Tar Heels lost to Arizona’s new Big 12 rival, Kansas, in the national championship game.
The Wildcats were selected to finish fifth in the Big 12 men’s basketball preseason coaches poll and are ranked in the Top 10 in the nation in the AP preseason Top 25.
Arizona is joining the Big 12, along with three other Pac-12 schools, after the conference fell apart over several issues, including television rights fees and the initial spark of USC and UCLA leaving for the Big Ten.
