EAST LANSING -- Michigan State forward Draymond Green was named the Big Ten player of the year, and Tom Izzo captured the conference's coach of the year award on Monday.

The two teamed up to lead Michigan State to a share of the Big Ten championship after beginning the season unranked. For Izzo, it was his third conference coaching honor. Green became the seventh Spartan to become player of the year and was also named to the all-defensive team as selected by the league's coaches.

Green and Izzo won both the coaches' and media votes. Also honored was sophomore guard Keith Appling, who was selected to the third team by the coaches and the media. Freshman guard Branden Dawson received honorable mention recognition from the media and was on the coaches' all-freshman team. Senior guard Austin Thornton was a Big Ten sportsman ship award honoree.

"I just thank God that I’ve got the right players that helped us become a championship team," Izzo said in a statement. "If the team does well, the individual awards will come and this year is a perfect example of that.

"I thought there were a lot of other worthy candidates for Coach of the Year. I thought Tom Crean did an incredible job putting his Indiana team on the biggest upswing from last year. John Beilein has done a great job at Michigan and I think Fran McCaffery has done an incredible job at Iowa. If you look at all the coaches, I could make arguments for all of them. It isn’t always about winning a championship, and I think there were a lot of great coaches this year. I guess I was just lucky enough to win."

Green was the only unanimous first-team selection. He leads the Big Ten in rebounding, averaging 10.3 rebounds per game. He also ranks among the top 10 in the conference in scoring, assists and steals.

"He's the most versatile player maybe in America," Izzo said. "He does as many things or more things than anybody I've seen in this league in a while."

Purdue's Robbie Hummel, Northwestern's John Shurna and Ohio State's Jared Sullinger were the other first-team players to win both the coaches' and media votes.

The coaches selected Wisconsin's Jordan Taylor to round out the team, and the media selected Penn State's Tim Frazier.

It was Sullinger who was considered Green's main competition for the player of the year award. But Green took it home, joining Jay Vincent, Scott Skiles, Shawn Respert, Mateen Cleaves, Morris Peterson and Kalin Lucas as Spartans to have done so.

"Coming into the season, being named Player of the Year was something that Coach Izzo and I had talked about, but everyone thought it would be Jared Sullinger," Green said in a statement. "Usually the best player on the best team gets a lot of publicity, and as we got better and started to win more games, I started getting thrown into that conversation. As my play started getting better, it became more of a realistic goal to have. It was a goal I set because I like to set goals, but it seemed so far out of reach coming into the season.

"Winning the Big Ten Championship was an incredible accomplishment, even though we had to share it. I’m also proud that I’m a leader of this team and we were able to come together and accomplish as much as we have with such young players. One of my biggest honors is to say that I was on the team that got this program back to where we are used to being and that I helped raise this program up even more."

Email Diamond Leung at dleung@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/diamond83.