Kansas City, Mo. – Augustana’s Daniel Jansen has been named the 2016 National Association of Basketball Coaches’ Division II Player of the Year. The national organization made the announcement Thursday morning.
Jansen, a member of the NABC All-America team, will receive his award at the AT&T NABC Guardians of the Game Awards Show on Sunday, April 3, at the Cullen Theater at Wortham Center in Houston, Texas.
Jansen, a 6-foot-9, 240-pound forward from Orange City is the first men’s basketball player in Augustana history to be named National Player of the Year by the NABC. The MOC Floyd Valley graduate was the first at Augustana to score over 2,000 career points and is the school’s all-time leading scorer with 2,217 points. He also ranks fifth all-time with 845 rebounds in his career. Jansen has been named to seven All-America teams in his career and has been named the NSIC and Central Region Player of the Year in back-to-back seasons.
A three-time All-NSIC First Team selection, Jansen is averaging 20.7 points, 7.4 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 1.2 steals per game while shooting 53.8 percent from the field. He recently earned his third straight All-NSIC First Team honor. He has set a new single season scoring mark in 2015-16 with 683 points and has scored in double-digits in 31 of 33 games this season, including 20-plus points 18 times. Jansen also became the NSIC’s all-time leading scorer in 2015-16 having scored 1,521 points in 88 career conference games. Jansen is one of just five active players in Division II (11 in all of NCAA basketball) with 2,000-plus career points and 600-plus career rebounds.
Prior to Wednesday night’s game against Tarleton State in the NCAA Divison II Elite Eight, Jansen had started all 128 games of his career. Jansen suffered an injury at shoot around prior to the Elite Eight and sat out Wednesday night’s game, missing the first game of his entire career at Augustana.
The Vikings defeated Tarleton State 86-79 at Dr Pepper Arena on Wednesday night to advance to the Final Four for the first time in program history. Augustana squared off against Western Oregon Thursday night in the national semi finals winning 74-55. Off the bench Jansen scored 13 points in the contest on 4-of-6 shooting from the floor including 3-of-4 from three point range and 2-of-2 from the free throw line. Ellsworth Minnesota grad Casey Schilling is also a key part of the Viking squad. In the semifinal against Western Oregon he scored 17 points on 5-of-14 shooting from the field and went a perfect 6-of-6 from the free thow line. Schilling also pulled down 9 rebounds in the contest.
Augustana will take a 33-2 record into the national championship at 2pm on Saturday March 26th when they square off against top ranked Lincoln Memorial in Frisco Texas.
