Unlike past seasons, there is no clear-cut favorite emerging to be named Big East Freshman of the Year. Two of the leading candidates are going head to head tonight when Tiffany Hayes and UConn face former Trinity Catholic star Da'Shena Stevens and St. John's.

It is an interesting race.

In all games, Stevens is the top freshman scorer in the Big East and second in rebounding. Keisha Hampton of DePaul is the No. 1 scorer in Big East games. Hayes has the added advantage of playing a key roll for a UConn team running away with the regular-season title. Pittsburgh's Pepper Wilson, Shanasa Sanders of Cincinnati, Notre Dame's Natalie Novosel, Adria Crawford of Georgetown, Marquette's Jessica Pachko, Khadijah Rushdan of Rutgers and Seton Hall's Kandice Green are other players who could figure into the equation.

While there are so many factors going into picking the Freshman of the Year or any vote that involves balloting of 16 head coaches, I decided to break down the race from the statistical end.

What I did was assign point totals based on where the players rank among the freshmen in the league. I broke it down both in overall and conference only games and ranked the players from 1-10 in points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks and 3-pointers with the conference leader getting 10 points, No. 2 getting 9, the No. 3 player being assigned 8 all the way to No. 10 getting one point. Here's what I came with.

Player, Team Conference-All Games-Total
Da'Shena Stevens, St. John's 37 41 78
Keisha Hampton, DePaul 30.5 37 67.5
Tiffany Hayes, UConn 39 27 66
Khadijah Rushdan, Rutgers 39 10 49
Pepper Wilson, Pittsburgh 20 22 42
Shanasa Sanders, Cincinnati 26.5 14 40.5
Adria Crawford, Georgetown 11 20 31
Caroline Doty, Connecticut 15 16 31
Natalie Novosel, Notre Dame 20 10 30
Jessica Pachko, Marquette 22.5 7 29.5
Kandice Green, Seton Hall 7 17 24
Erica Solomon, Notre Dame 5 14 19