MVC & OVC Honor Players
(St. Louis, MO) – Our first weekly award winners have been announced by the Missouri Valley and Ohio Valley Conferences. The league’s display weekly winners of various awards throughout the season and as is often true, team success builds into individual notoriety.
Ohio Valley Conference
Southern Indiana opened on the road at Missouri and then played its first ever home, Division 1 game. After a narrow loss to the Southeastern Conference’s Tigers in Columbia, Missouri, the Screaming Eagles defeated the Missouri Valley’s Southern Illinois.
Senior Jelani Simmons scored 23 points during the road loss and 18 during the team’s historic ‘first D1 win’. Simmons’ rebounding was important too. The 6’5 guard hauled in six rebounds against Mizzou and five more against the Salukis.
During USI’s first week as an Ohio Valley team, one of their players is the OVC Player of the Week.
Southern Illinois Edwardsville split its opening two games and reigning junior college player of the year, Damarco ‘Polo’ Minor earned this week’s Newcomer of the Week award. The Chicago native averaged 16 points and 5.5 assists as SIUE defeated Harris-Stowe and dropped a decision at Purdue Fort Wayne.
During the ‘portal pandemic’ we may see less impact freshmen this season, but the OVC Freshman of the Week is Tennessee Tech’s Grant Strong. Exhibiting a strong floor game Strong averaged 5.5 points, 2.5 assists and two rebounds as the Golden Eagles split their two opening week games. Strong scored all eleven points and handed out all five of his assists in TTU’s victory over Tennessee Wesleyan.
Missouri Valley Conference
The nation’s leading rebounder is this week’s Valley Player of the Week. Illinois State’s Kendall Lewis is averaging 16.7 points and 13.7 rebounds during the Redbirds’ first three games. The 6’8 senior has topped the 20-point mark twice and recorded three-straight double-digit, rebounding games.
Indiana State head coach Josh Schertz told us Courvoisier McCauley could score and he didn’t lie. The DePaul transfer leads the undefeated Sycamores (2-0) with an 18.5 points-per-game average. McCauley, this week’s Newcomer of the Week. He snared 16 rebounds in two games and sparked ISU to its first 2-0 start in over ten years.
Weekly award winners will be high-lighted here near the beginning of the week throughout the season.
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Done like only you can @Frank_Cusumano. So perfect. Respectful. Hopeful. Personal. You've always been the best. @DanRolfes, you are in our prayers still today. Thanks for sharing.
As we said the 'closed' transfer portal keeps growing. Paperwork delays and/or no regard for deadlines. Over 2K in the portal now. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that. Just saying before you think your program won't have more players leaving, give it a minute to see
BTW, despite the portal being 'closed' you'll still hear about players entering it because sometimes paperwork is slow AND all they have to do is sue to be able to enter later.
Admittedly I am no recruiting expert, but I'm seeing these reports about which coaches have been crushing the portal. We'll know who did what when we see them play, but no one has been more active than @TSUTigersMBB's @coachpenny1. 6 D1's among the 9 he's signed.
