Incidentally, there is a blog called cracked sidewalks which references a metric called PORPAGATU! (am calling it P from here on in) which stands for Points over replacement per adjusted game at that usage!  It's essentially the equivalency of WAR for college basketball and it takes into account how difficult it is to produce high levels of efficiency at high usage rates.  Put another way, it looks at replacing a player with an average player playing at the same high usage rate.  Five of the last 6 National Player of the Years (NPOY) led the nation in P and the past 7 winners were ranked 1st or 2nd.  In the history of this metric, no NPOY had a score below 6.1 and this year, the only three players at or above this score are Markus Howard (6.7), Peyton Pritchard (6.4) and Luka Garza (6.1).  Obi is at 5.2.  And for good measure, over the past month, Howard's P is an unheard of 8.3; no other NPOY candidate cracks the top 10 during this timeframe.  (Interestingly, Obi's teammate Jalen Crutcher ranks second in the country over the last month.)

To interpret this as best I can, Markus Howard should be the clear winner because:  a) his usage rate is extremely high which means that b) he does not have a "second fiddle" or teammate anywhere near the caliber of the others in contention which means that: c) he is the focus of many double teams and yet is still managing to score over 27 points and hand out 3 assists per game.  Let's also throw in the fact that for the past 7 years, the person with the highest P who played for a single digit seed in the tournament (where Marquette is headed) has been named the NPOY.

Might be a good idea to grab that +900.

The Dude wrote:

So Vernon Carey, Winston and Jordan Nwora are in the mix as well
The National picked Obi and he's +700 odds to win POY

The Athletic named Obi Toppin (+700) their midseason national player of the year. The Dayton Flyers’ dunking machine has put up 19.5 points per game while shooting 62.7 percent from the field.
Here are the favorites per Vegas for POYVernon Carey Jr. (Duke)+350Cassius Winston (Michigan State)+400Jordan Nwora (Louisville)+650Obi Toppin (Dayton)+700Devon Dotson (Kansas)+900Markus Howard (Marquette) +900Payton Pritchard (Oregon)+900Kaleb Wesson (Ohio State)+1000Myles Powell (Seton Hall)+1000Filip Petrusev (Gonzaga)+1200

Most of the people on that list(other than Toppin) have dropped when it comes to Player of the Year contention because their teams are no longer elite(Winston, Markus Howard, Kaleb Wesson) or they have a teammate who is just as important as them(Dotson, Vernon Carey). I'd say Toppin is the favorite right now, with Myles Powell, Jordan Nwora and maybe Duke's Tre Jones all being a close 2nd.  

GWmayem,  the reason I'd exclude Marcus Howard and Luka Garza is because Marquette and Iowa are not elite teams at the moment. Both teams will make the NCAA tournament, but I'm not sure if either team can win more than 1 game in the NCAA tournament. Player of the Year usually goes to someone who plays for a 1 or 2 seed or someone who is putting up outrageous numbers on a mid-major type of team, like Bogut or Fredette which you listed as being previous winners of Player of the Year. I think Bogut may have been helped by the fact that he was projected to be the #1 pick in the draft that year. 
 

It’s mostly a two person race right now between Howard and Toppin, with Garza and Pritchard hanging around (Pritchard might be wearing down as his numbers have dipped the last two weeks).   Myles Powell has also seen a downtick, but i would say he rounds out the top 5.   Malachi Flynn worth a mention with SDSU undefeated and I personally love Oturu, the big guy on Minnesota, but the team isn’t good enough to get him in the convo. 

For whoever mentioned Jordan Nwora, cross him off your list.  He’s played so bad lately he got benched and didn’t even start the last game.  Louisville has no-showed their last two.

On an unrelated note, anyone else surprised Lamar Kimble hasn’t had a bigger impact for Louisville?  I thought he’d light it up anywhere but it just hasn’t happened for him there despite a few flashes. Should have stayed at St Joe’s or gone somewhere else I guess.

FQ looks like a 2 man race, agreed.