Jamier and Madelynn
Awards time
This past weekend was McDonald's All-Star weekend with the highlight being the banquet where they recognize the senior all-star teams and award Mr. and Miss Basketball.
Your winners:
When I did a straw poll of ball knowers back in January, Jamier Rose was the unanimous choice and the panel nailed Gabe Lash as one of the other finalists. It also was higher on Davis Mann than the coaches' vote for the semifinalists.
So Rose winning was hardly a surprise.
Madelynn Deprey, on the other hand, wasn't the frontrunner back in January. She wasn't far off, placing 2nd on 4 ballots and was left off a ballot entirely.
Deprey, as you already know, led Caribou to the Gold Ball, which certainly enhanced her case, but how much? It all depends on when the final vote was taken, which isn't public knowledge for some reason.
How good was she in the tournament? She was second in scoring, boys or girls, with 86 points (Davis Mann had 105) and led all players in rebounds with 42.
So yeah, those are two really good choices for Mr. and Miss Basketball.
The MABC also selected a worthy recipient for the Media Award in Rene Cloukey. Cloukey, who just retired, has been a fixture in the County for his coverage of high school basketball for WAGM, criss-crossing Aroostook County from Caribou and Presque Isle to the tiniest class D gyms on the Canadian border. Congratulations to Rene.
Circling back to player stats from the tournament, the master list has been updated to include the Gold Ball games.
Everyone (except for a game or two that had tech issues) is at the link below.
Lucas McNelly
If you'd like the raw data for whatever off-season research project you've got an idea to do, I exported it as a csv. If you come up with something cool, share it with the group!
On the podcast, I spoke to St. Dom's boys coach (and newly-minted Champion) Josh LaPrell about winning his first Gold Ball, how he turned around a program that had gone something like 2-52 before he got there, the difficulties of scheduling, avoiding blowouts, and a lot more.
This was a really fun conversation.
You can also listen on Spotify and you know the drill.
I'm working on lining up more podcast guests and I'm going to try to do one semi-weekly throughout the off-season. If you've got any suggestions for guests, send them along.
Also, if you're new here, I've got some coverage of spring sports on the way. It's not every day like basketball season, but there's rankings and Heal Points that load in under and hour for Baseball, Softball, and Lacrosse. So stick around!
Our man Cooper dominated the ACC awards and if you saw on the broadcast of the Duke/UNC game, he's on pace to become the first ACC player to ever lead his team in Points, Rebounds, Assists, Steals, and Blocks and the first freshman to ever do it in D-1. Crazy.
It looks like the Wooden Award is down to just two people: Cooper and Johni Broome.
Three freshmen have won the Wooden Award: Anthony Davis, Zion Williamson, and Kevin Durant. No big deal.
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