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Coming off yet another monster performance in Arkansas’ win over LSU, Mason Jones continues to force his way into the conversation for SEC Player of the Year.

The talented junior notched his eighth 30-point game of the season Wednesday night, which is more than any SEC player in the last 20 seasons. He dropped 36 points on 10-of-17 shooting from the floor, including 4 of 6 beyond the arc, and 12-of-14 shooting from the free throw line.

From a purely statistical standpoint, it’s hard to argue that he’s not the best player in the conference. Jones leads the SEC in scoring at 21.8 points per game and also came into the week as the only player in the league who ranked in the top 20 in rebounding, assists and steals.

That production has made him one of 30 players on the Naismith Trophy Player of the Year midseason list and one of five finalists for the Jerry West Award, which is given to the best shooting guard in the country.

However, Arkansas’ struggles as a team during conference play have hurt his chances. The Razorbacks are currently 10th in the SEC and, with one game remaining, they can’t finish any higher than ninth.

Saturday’s loss at Georgia, in which Jones scored 22 second-half points, guaranteed Arkansas will have a losing record in SEC play. Even if it beats Texas A&M on Saturday, it’ll finish just 8-10.

That is significant because the SEC Player of the Year typically comes from one of the top teams in the conference - but that’s not always the case.

As seen in the chart below, eight of the 10 honorees since 2012 - which includes two years the AP and coaches chose different players - have come from teams that finished in the top three of the standings.

Both of the exceptions played at Georgia: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in 2013 and Yante Maten in 2018.

The Bulldogs went just 15-16 overall in the regular season and 9-9 in conference play, which was tied for eighth, the year Caldwell-Pope won it. Five years later, they were above .500 at the end of the regular season at 16-14 overall, but had an abysmal 7-11 SEC mark and tied for 11th. That didn’t keep the AP from picking Maten as its SEC Player of the Year, though.

The latter of those is an extremely rare case. It was just the fifth time a player on a team with a losing conference record been named SEC Player of the Year since the award was first presented by the AP and UPI in 1965.

Before Maten two years ago, Tennessee’s Tony White was the last player to do so. Despite the Volunteers’ 7-11 mark in SEC play, he shared the UPI’s player of the year honor with Alabama’s Derrick McKey in 1987.

The other three instances happened about 40 years ago, as LSU legend Pete Maravich won it twice when the Tigers went 8-10 in 1968 and 7-11 in 1969 and then Ole Miss’ Johnny Neumann won it in 1971 when the Tigers went 6-12.

Assuming he hangs on to the scoring title, Jones will also become the 10th player since 1996-97 to lead the SEC in scoring with an average of at least 20 points.

Of the nine previous to do so, five - Vanderbilt’s Dan Langhi (22.1 ppg) in 2000 and Shan Foster (20.3) in 2008, Tennessee’s Ron Slay (21.2) in 2003 and Chris Lofton (20.8) in 2007, and South Carolina’s Sindarius Thornwell (21.4) in 2017 - went on to be named SEC Player of the Year, although four of them shared the award with someone else.

Among the four who didn’t get the award, Kentucky’s Jodie Meeks is statistically most similar to Jones. A high-volume scorer, he averaged a whopping 23.7 points in 2009, but the Wildcats went 19-12 and 9-9 in conference play, missing the big dance and earning an NIT bid. The award that year instead went to Marcus Thornton, who averaged 21.1 points for regular-season champion LSU.

There’s no telling how the AP and conference coaches will vote, but Jones has certainly forced them to strongly consider him despite the Razorbacks’ poor conference record.

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