ST. LOUIS -- The 2019 MVC Larry Bird Player of the Year is senior Marques Townes of regular-season co-champion Loyola.  Townes has led the Ramblers to back-to-back regular-season titles for the first time in program history.  In league play, he topped the MVC with 18.1 points per game and ranked third with 3.1 assists per game.  His 107 assists for the season led the Ramblers as did his 15.9 scoring average.  He's the second-straight Rambler to win the league's top honor (Clayton Custer won last year.)

2019 MVC All-Conference Teams and Specialty Honors (PDF)

Townes received 110 total points to edge Nick McGlynn of Drake (95 points) and teammate Cameron Krutwig (45 points).  Five different student-athletes received first-place tallies, including Townes, McGlynn, Krutwig, Tulio Da Silva of Missouri State and Phil Fayne of Illinois State -- each was named to the league's First Team.  The voting for the Bird Trophy recipient was the closest since 2010 when Adam Koch of UNI edged runnerup Dinma Odiakosa of Illinois State by 13 points.  Townes and Krutwig, meanwhile, became the fifth pair of teammates in the past six seasons to finish in the Top 3 of the balloting.  It also marks the first time since 2012 and 2013 that the same school had a Larry Bird winner in successive seasons (Doug McDermott of Creighton, both in 2012 and 2013).

Voting was conducted by coaches, sports information directors and a media panel (voters could not vote for their own student-athlete.)  Including this year, 0 freshmen, 2 sophomores, 17 juniors (seven of whom repeated) and 32 seniors have won the award (spanning 1969-2019). 
 

Student-Athlete, School	1st	2nd	3rd	TOTAL
Marques Townes, Loyola	25	16	3	110
Nick McGlynn, Drake	17	18	8	95
Cameron Krutwig, Loyola	5	8	14	45
Tulio Da Silva, Missouri St.	1	2	7	14
Phil Fayne, Illinois State	1	1	7	12

Townes, a senior guard from Edison (N.J.) St. Joseph (and a transfer from Fairleigh Dickinson) enters the State Farm MVC Tournament with 1,513 career points, more than any other active player in the Conference.  He averaged 19.7 points in Loyola's final 10 games, hitting 32 points in the win against Drake and notching 26 in the regular-season finale against Bradley on March 2.  Notably, this year's crown marks the second in a row for Loyola, which had never won back-to-back conference titles in its history (in any league).  Townes joins Custer as the only Loyola players to earn the league's top player honor.

The runnerup in the Larry Bird Trophy voting, Nick McGlynn of Drake is the 2019 MVC Defensive Player of the Year.  A Stoughton, Wis., native, he has led Drake to an historic season, as the Bulldogs -- picked ninth in the pre-season MVC poll -- won their first regular-season title since 2008 with 23 wins to date, the third-most in program history.  McGlynn enters the tournament with 52 blocks, which ranks second-best in the MVC this year.  He is the program's all-time career leader with 143 blocks, which also is best among active players in the Conference.  The league's leader in rebounding, McGlynn is the first Drake player to earn MVC Defensive Player of the Year honors.  The league began selecting a Defensive Player of the Year in 1989.

The league's Freshman of the Year is AJ Green of UNI.  A native of Cedar Falls, Iowa, and son of UNI associate head coach Kyle Green, AJ is looking to become the first MVC freshman since 1999 to average better than 15.0 points per game.  Green (15.2 ppg) has notched 472 points in his rookie campaign -- only five freshmen in league history have scored more.  The MVC began selecting a Freshman of the Year award in 1986, and he joins former Panthers Eric Coleman (2005) and Seth Tuttle (2012) as recipients.

Missouri State's Tulio Da Silva is the MVC Newcomer of the Year.  The junior from Formiga, Brazil, has scored in double figures in 22 of 26 games as a Bear and has registered double-doubles in four games this year, including two of the past three games. He ranks third in the MVC in rebounds per game (7.6), is fourth in field goal percentage (.562) and averaged 14.7 points per game, which ranks 11th best (and second among first-year MVC players).  The MVC began its Newcomer of the Year program in 1969, and he joins Danny Moore (1997), Mike Wallace (2001), Spencer Laurie (2007), Adam Leonard (2010), Dequon Miller (2016) and Alize Johnson (2017) as Missouri State players to earn the honor.

The MVC also selects a “Sixth Man Award” recipient, and for the first time, two players share the honor.  The honor is presented to the league's top reserve player (one who has started fewer than 25 percent of his team's games - in all games or in conference-only play).  Spencer Haldeman of UNI and Nate Kennell of Bradley earned this year's award, first chosen in 1997.  Kennell is the first Brave to win the honor, while Haldeman joins former Panthers Lucas O'Rear (2009 and 2010) and Wes Washpun (2015) as UNI players tabbed as Sixth Man.  Haldeman ranks third for UNI in scoring with 7.9 points per game despite not starting any of the team's 31 games.  He ranks second on the team with 50 three-point makes and converts a team-best 86.2 percent from the foul line.  Kennell also is his team's third-leading scorer, averaging 9.4 points per contest, and didn't start any of Bradley's league games.  For the season, he ranks second for Bradley with 56 made three-pointers and also contributed 60 assists and 19 steals.

In addition to the specialty awards, the conference announced its all-conference units (first-team, second-team, and third-team), all-newcomer team, all-freshman team, and all-defense team.  The all-bench and most-improved units have been selected by the league’s beat writers and will be announced Wednesday (March 6).  A complete listing of all-conference honorees and previous season specialty award winners is attached.