LOS ANGELES – The nation’s premier center continues to earn national recognition, as Stanford senior Maxime Raynaud has been selected to the Wooden Award Late Midseason Top 20 Watchlist. Raynaud is one of two ACC players selected to the list, along with Duke’s Cooper Flagg.
The 7-footer from Paris is no stranger to national praise this season, as he was also named a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Center of the Year top-10 nominee and to the Oscar Robertson Trophy watchlist.
Raynaud leads the ACC in scoring (20.4 ppg) and rebounding (11.7 rpg), and he ranks third nationally in rebounds and 11th in scoring, through games on Feb. 10. Stanford has never had a player finish higher than third on the national rebounding leaderboard (Curtis Borchardt, 2001-02), while his scoring average is on pace to be a top-10 single-season average in program history.
Raynaud leads the country with 20 double-doubles, three ahead of the rest of the country and six ahead of every other power conference player. He is currently tied with Adam Keefe (1991-92) for Stanford’s single-season double-double record, and he is one of six power conference players to reach 20 double-doubles over the past five seasons, along with Zach Edey (Purdue, 2x), Oscar Tshiebwe (Kentucky, 2x), Oumar Ballo (Arizona), Joel Soriano (St. John's), and Armando Bacot (North Carolina).
He would join a select group of players to win both the league's scoring and rebounding titles, which has only been done 13 previous times in ACC history - nine of those players won ACC Player of the Year, and only twice since the 1950s (1964 and 1978) has the scoring/rebounding leader not been the ACC Player of the Year. The last five to accomplish the feat have all earned the ACC's top award: Marvin Bagley III (Duke, 2018), Tyler Hansbrough (UNC, 2008), Antawn Jamison (UNC, 1998), Tim Duncan (Wake, 1997) and Horace Grant (Clemson, 1987).
Raynaud has earned three ACC Player of the Week awards this season, and he was named a USBWA National Player of the Week on Nov. 19.
Created in 1976, the Los Angeles Athletic Club John R. Wooden Award Program represents the pinnacle of honors in college basketball. Selected by a panel of national college basketball experts, the list comprises 20 student-athletes who are frontrunners for the most prestigious honors in college basketball: the Wooden Award All-American Team and the Wooden Award Most Outstanding Player.