Zack Rosen Named Ivy League Men’s Basketball Player Of The Year

RELEASE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

The Ivy League announced its All-Ivy teams in men’s basketball today, and Penn senior guard Zack Rosen was named the Ivy League Player of the Year as well as first-team All-Ivy. In addition, senior forward Rob Belcore was named honorable mention All-Ivy.

Rosen was unanimously voted to both of his honors by the Ivy coaches. He is just the fourth player to receive the Player of the Year honor in a unanimous vote since 2000, the others being Penn’s Michael Jordan in 1999-2000, Penn’s Ibrahim Jaaber in 2005-06, and Cornell’s Ryan Wittman in 2009-10.

Rosen was one of just two players voted unanimously to the All-Ivy first team, along with Princeton junior Ian Hummer. The other first-team honorees were Brian Barbour (Columbia), Chris Wroblewski (Cornell), Kyle Casey (Harvard) and Greg Mangano (Yale).

This marks the 16th time a Penn player has been named Ivy League Player of the Year. Rosen is the first since Ibrahim Jaaber won the award twice, in 2005-06 and 2006-07. In addition, Rosen becomes just the 10th player in program history to earn first-team All-Ivy three times and the first since Jordan did it three years in a row from 1997-98 to 1999-2000. The others on that exclusive list are Jerome Allen, Perry Bromwell, Corky Calhoun, Ron Haigler, Matt Maloney, Keven McDonald, Jeff Neuman and Stan Pawlak.

Rosen finished the 2011-12 season leading the Ivy League in conference scoring for the second straight year, averaging 18.6 points per game, as well as minutes played per game (38.1). He was also second among Ivy players in three-point field goal percentage (.392) and three-point field goals per game (2.2), third in free-throw percentage (.886), sixth in assists per game (3.8) and steals per game (1.5), and ninth in assist/turnover ratio (1.39).

Rosen set the program’s all-time records for assists and minutes played this season, and is tied for the program record with 113 career starts. He is one assist shy of Penn’s single-season record, with 161, and his 18.5 points-per-game average is the best by a Quaker since Hassan Duncombe averaged 19.1 ppg in 1989-90. Rosen finished the regular season with 575 points, which is seventh on Penn’s single-season list and the most since Tony Price scored 633 in 1978-79. Rosen’s 1,686 career points are third all-time at Penn, behind only Ernie Beck and Ugonna Onyekwe.

This is the first All-Ivy honor for Belcore, who ended up leading Penn in conference rebounding and placed 11th among Ivy players with 5.3 boards per game. He also ended the season second in steals per game (2.1) and assist/turnover ratio (3.07), and eighth in assists per game (3.1).

Overall, Belcore finished the regular season fourth on the team in scoring (7.0 ppg), tops in rebounds (4.8 rpg). He had a team-high 56 steals, which is tied for seventh on Penn’s single-season list with Ira Bowman (56 in 1994-95), and was second on the team with 75 assists.