CBS Sports' Gary Parrish rates Pitt's Steven Adams top Big East freshman

CBS Sports' Gary Parrish took what amounts to a Big East midseason review recently and in it, he chose Pitt center Steven Adams for the conference's Freshman of the Year:

Freshman of the Year favorite: Ryan Arcidiacono has created some buzz at Villanova, but he's only shooting 33.0 percent from the field for a middle-of-the-pack Big East team. So how good is that, really? I'll go with Pittsburgh's Steven Adams here. He's averaging 7.3 points and 6.2 rebounds in 21.4 minutes per game. That's not great. But he's a relevant player on a relevant team, and that's good enough in this league in this season.

I've got no beef with Parrish who does a pretty good job, but the astonishing part is that he completely doesn't even mention St. John's forward Jakarr Sampson. Sampson is averaging nearly 15 points and seven rebounds per game and has been named the Big East Rookie of the Week three times already. I think Adams is having a nice little year, but Sampson has to be the runaway pick right now.

The interesting part in all of this, of course, is that Adams might not even be the best freshman on Pitt's team. James Robinson has played pretty well and I think both are neck and neck right now. I might give the nod to Robinson, but you can make a pretty good argument for either. But in any event, neither is playing as well as Sampson.

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