High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The UPI College Basketball Player of the Year was an annual basketball award given to the best men's basketball player in NCAA Division I competition. The award was first given following the 1954 55 season and was discontinued following the 1995 96 season. It was given by United Press International (UPI), a news agency in the United States that rivaled the Associated Press but began to decline with the advent of television news. Five players Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas, Lew Alcindor[a], Bill Walton and Ralph Sampson won the award multiple times. Of these five, only Robertson, Walton and Sampson were three-time UPI Players of the Year.