Irish's Hansbrough, Brey honored

Notre Dame's Ben Hansbrough won Big East Player of the Year honors and the Irish's Mike Brey was named Coach of the Year in a vote of his peers. Just for good measure, Notre Dame forward Tim Abromaitis won his second straight Big East scholar-athlete award. The final award announced Tuesday by the league was Rookie of the Year, which went to DePaul's Cleveland Melvin.

Hansbrough was the only unanimous selection to the first team All-Big East squad after averaging 18.5 points and shooting 45.1 percent from three-point range. "I'm not the most talented player, but I think I've worked harder than the majority of college players,'' Hansbrough said.

For Brey, it was his third Big East Coach of the Year award in five seasons. He also won in 2006-07 and 2007-08. The No. 4 Irish were picked to finish seventh in the preseason poll, but took second behind Pitt with a 14-4 record (25-5 overall), winning 11 of their final 12 games. Abromaitis actually graduated last year and now is in an accelerated MBA program at Notre Dame. He averaged 15.2 points and shot .419 from three-point range.

Melvin averaged 14.3 points for the 1-17 Blue Demons.