March 9, 2010
NEW YORK – Junior Tim Abromaitis (Unionville, Conn.), recently selected as an ESPN The Magazine first team Academic All-American, was named the 2009-10 BIG EAST Men’s Basketball Scholar-Athlete of the Year. The Conference’s Academic Affairs Committee made the selection.
The award was presented to Abromaitis on Wednesday evening (March 9) at Madison Square Garden in New York, N.Y., site of the ’10 BIG EAST Men’s Basketball Championship.
Abromaitis will receive a $2,000 scholarship that can be applied to graduate or professional studies. He is the second Irish player to earn the honor. Pat Garrity, who earned BIG EAST player-of-the-year accolades in 2007, was named winner of the award in 2008.
The BIG EAST Basketball Scholar-Athlete of the Year award is one of a number of scholarships presented by the BIG EAST Conference during the 2009-10 academic year. In addition, 32 student-athletes (one male and one female from each of the BIG EAST’s 16 member institutions) will receive postgraduate scholarships as the winners of their respective institutions’ Scholar-Athlete Award. The conference also names a BIG EAST Football Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
The winners of the institutional, basketball and football awards are then eligible for the BIG EAST Scholar-Athlete of the Year award, which provides an additional postgraduate scholarship to one male and one female student-athlete.
Abromaitis became Notre Dame’s first first-team Academic All-America selection since Chris Quinn in 2006 and is the eighth different Irish player to garner Academic All-America honors on 13 occasions. He also is the program’s seventh first-team Academic All-America honoree.
A junior finance major in the Mendoza College of Business, Abromaitis owns a 3.72 grade point average. A three-time member of the Dean’s List and member of the BIG EAST Academic All-Star Team, he will graduate in May 2010 one full year ahead of his class and will enter Notre Dame’s intensified one-year MBA program following graduation.
Abromaitis, who did not play at during the 2008-09 campaign and in just 12 games during his rookie season in 2007-08, was named to the BIG EAST Honorable Mention Team on Sunday (March 7). He ranked as one of the league’s most improved players in ’09-’10. He averaged career best of 18.2 points and 5.7 rebounds in 18 conference contests this season and is averaging personal bests of 17.2 and 4.9 rebounds overall. Abromaitis has scored in double figures in all but three games this season and has topped the 20-point mark on eight occasions and netted 30-plus points in two of those contests (a career-high 31 points against Central Florida and a BIG EAST best 30 points against Syracuse).
Abromaitis leads Notre Dame in field goal percentage (.506), three-point field goal percentage (.449) and free throw shooting (.885). He also ranks sixth nationally in three-point field goal percentage and 17th in free-throw percentage.
— ND —