No idea if UALR will accept the invitation to either the College
Basketball Invitational or College Insider Tournament. In the meantime, we’ll
go ahead and give out our Burn The Horse yearly award winners.
BTH PLUS MINUS LEADER
Junior Will Neighbour was the runaway winner.
BTH VOTE PLAYER OF THE YEAR
As voted in our nightly polls throughout the season by Burn The Horse
readers, freshmen point guards John Gillon and Josh Hagins tied for player of
the year points. Neighbour was third and sophomore Michael Javes fourth.
DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR
No doubt is was junior Leroy Isler, who routinely drew difficult
assignments and came through much of the time. Isler seemed to really embrace
playing defense. That’s a great trait to have in a teammate.
NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR
Since the majority of the roster was made up of newcomers, this was
difficult. In the end, we decided to go with freshman point guard John Gillon. Gillon
averaged 10.6 points this season.
SIXTH MAN OF THE YEAR
There were a lot of different starting lineups utilized throughout the
year. And even though he started 11 of the 25 games he appeared in, we went
with sophomore Taggart Lockhart. His loss due to injury was definitely felt
late in the season.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
I’m not sure there’s a more inspirational story than that of senior
guard Ted Crass. If everyone worked as hard in their life as he did for UALR,
we’d all be a lot more successful.
