The Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year is an annual

college basketball In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...

award presented to the top defensive player in men's basketball in the

Pac-12 Conference The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...

. The winner is selected by conference coaches, who are not allowed to vote for players on their own team. The award began in 1984, when the conference consisted of 10 teams and was known as the Pacific-10. It stopped being issued starting in 1988 but was restarted in 2008. The conference added two teams and became the Pac-12 in 2011. Jorge Gutiérrez of

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

(2012) and Evan Mobley of

USC USC most often refers to: * University of South Carolina, a public research university ** University of South Carolina System, the main university and its satellite campuses **South Carolina Gamecocks, the school athletic program * University of ...

(2021) are the only players to also win the Pac-12 Player of the Year in the same season.

Gary Payton Gary Dwayne Payton Sr. (born July 23, 1968) is an American former professional basketball player who played the point guard position. Widely considered one of the greatest point guards of all time, he is best known for his 13-year tenure with t ...

won both awards in separate seasons with

Oregon State Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering col ...

, capturing the defensive honor as a freshman in 1987 and the conference player of the year as a senior in 1990. He credited Beavers coach

Ralph Miller Ralph H. Miller (March 9, 1919 – May 15, 2001) was an American college basketball coach, a head coach for 38 years at three universities: Wichita (now known as Wichita State), Iowa, and Oregon State. With an overall record of , his teams had ...

with molding him into a standout defender. Payton played 17 seasons in the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United S ...

(NBA), and became the only

point guard The point guard (PG), also called the one or the point, is one of the five Basketball positions, positions in a regulation basketball game. A point guard has perhaps the most specialized role of any position. Point guards are expected to run t ...

to be named the

NBA Defensive Player of the Year The NBA's Defensive Player of the Year Award is an annual National Basketball Association (NBA) award given since the 1982–83 NBA season to the best defensive player of the regular season. The winner is selected by a panel of 124 sportswrite ...

. His son, Gary Payton II, later played with Oregon State as well, and was voted the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year in 2015 and 2016. He and

Matisse Thybulle Matisse Vincent Thybulle ( ; born March 4, 1997) is an Australian-American professional basketball player for the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was selected in the first round of the 2019 NBA draft with the ...

(2018, 2019) are the only repeat winners of the award. Gary Payton II Beavers (cropped)

Winners by school

References

{{Pac-12 Conference men's basketball navbox Awards established in 1984 College basketball conference trophies and awards in the United States Defensive Player of the Year