Selecting five preseason All-Americans is harder than ever this year

The most telling aspect of the preseason All-American team the Associated Press unveiled Monday afternoon wasn't which five players were selected.

It was that a total of 29 players received votes, eight more than last year, seven more than 2012 and 11 more than 2011.

The closest the 65-member panel came to a consensus was North Carolina combo guard Marcus Paige and Louisville power forward Montrezl Harrell, who appeared on 58 and 56 ballots, respectively. Wichita State point guard Fred VanVleet, Wisconsin forward Frank Kaminsky and Duke center Jahlil Okafor rounded out the rest of the preseason All-American team.

While all five of those players are certainly worthy candidates for All-American honors, what makes this year unusual is that none of them are clear-cut, can't-miss choices. In fact, it would be easy to concoct an equally reasonable five-man All-American team that included none of the AP panel's choices.

Would anyone complain about a preseason All-American team featuring Michigan's Caris Levert, Arizona's Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Iowa State's Georges Niang and Kentucky's Aaron Harrison and Karl Towns? Or what about one that included Wichita State's Ron Baker, Arizona's Stanley Johnson, Utah's Delon Wright, Wisconsin's Sam Dekker and Kansas' Cliff Alexander?

You can quibble with a few of those selections or omissions, I'm sure, but the point is there's no can't-miss choice this season. That differs from last year when Marcus Smart was a unanimous selection and Doug McDermott appeared on all but two ballots. Or the year before when Cody Zeller was one vote shy of being a unanimous pick and McDermott appeared on 62 of 65 ballots. Or 2011 when Ohio State's Jared Sullinger was a unanimous selection entering his sophomore season.

What that suggests is this year should feature a wide-open race both for national player of the year and to emerge as the potential No. 1 pick in next year's draft. One of the freshmen could take the latter on potential alone, but it wouldn't be shocking to see a veteran candidate or two emerge.

For the record, my preseason All-American picks are as follows: Marcus Paige, Aaron Harrison, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Montrezl Harrell and Jahlil Okafor.

Go ahead and craft your counter-arguments in the comments. I'll certainly understand. The beauty of this season is there are at least a dozen players equally worthy of consideration.

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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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