Doug McDermott has done a lot in four years at Creighton and the Big East Player of the Year Award is likely among the first of a stream of accolades he will receive this year.

McDermott was awarded the honor Wednesday, ESPN reported, one day before the Creighton Blue Jays (14th in the nation, 2nd in the Big East) play DePaul in the conference tournament quarterfinals.

"Being the Big East Player of the Year, it doesn't get much better than that," McDermott said. "There's been so many great players to come through this league, and to do it in our first year, that's pretty cool."

For McDermott, it will get better. He is currently seventh on the all-time NCAA scoring list, but has also played the second-most amount of games of anyone in the top 10. Regardless, McDermott can still climb and he is 56 points away from cracking the top five.

McDermott leads the nation with 26.5 points per game and the Sporting News' player of the year honor is expected to be the first of many. ESPN's Eamonn Brennan has had McDermott at the top of his watch list for the Wooden Award, college basketball's highest individual honor, since the eighth week of the season.

His improvement from freshman to senior has been nothing short of astonishing. While his field goal percentage has never been worse than it is right now at .522, he increased three-point percentage from .405 to .447, his free throw percentage from .746 to .867 and his points average from 14.9 per game to 26.5 per game.

Scoop Jackson argued in a column for ESPN that McDermott is worthy of consideration for a top-five NBA Draft choice. Jackson compared McDermott's size (six-foot-nine, 230 pounds) and knack for scoring to that of Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Love and, yes, Larry Bird.

McDermott is just now generating a lot of buzz, which will only get louder when he wins more awards and if he should lead his team deep into both the Big East and NCAA Tournaments.

As for the Larry Bird comparison, Sports Illustrated already made that with their NCAA Tournament magazine cover, a tribute to Larry Legend's in 1977.