As the Hilltopper Men’s Basketball Team prepare to travel to the Elite Eight competition in Louisville, Ky. in just a few days, the honors keep pouring in for Topper basketball.
West Liberty University head basketball coach Jim Crutchfield was named Atlantic District Coach of the Year for the third consecutive season and Hilltopper senior Alex Falk earned first-team honors on Friday when the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) announced its 2012-13 All-District Teams.
Selected in balloting by NABC members from coast to coast, the All-District teams mirror the NCAA Division II’s regional setup with 11 players – 6 first-team and 5 second-team – honored in each of the nation’s eight districts or regions.
The 88 All-District players comprise the ballot for the 2013 NABC Coaches’ Division II All-America Team, which will be announced next week in conjunction with the Elite Eight.
The Hilltoppers capped their run to an unprecedented third consecutive Atlantic Region championship earlier this week with an 86-63 rout of No. 10-ranked Indiana (Pa.) in the regional title tilt. In his 9th season at the West Liberty helm, the 5-time WVIAC Coach of the Year has the highest career winning percentage of any NCAA men’s coach (240-44,.845). Mark Few, who improved to 374-92 (.803) in his 14th season at Gonzaga with Thursday’s 64-58 win against Southern in an NCAA Division I first-round tournament game, is a distant second.
Falk is in the midst of sweeping nearly every major individual award as the leading scorer (20.8 ppg.) on the highest-scoring team in the nation. Honored earlier this week as a first-team All-American and the Daktronics NCAA Division II National Player of the Year, the 6-4 senior guard from Sandusky, Ohio was also named Atlantic Region Player of the Year and WVIAC Player of the Year.
The two-time WVIAC Tournament MVP was the leading scorer in the Atlantic Region tournament and earned his second straight Atlantic Region All-Tournament berth this week as the Hilltoppers wrapped up their regional “three-peat.”
The four-year veteran has led West Liberty to a 126-8 record in his school-record 134 games and ranks No. 5 on WLU’s career scoring list with 1,957 points. West Liberty University senior Alex Falk will be leading the Hilltoppers into their third straight NCAA Division II Elite 8 at 2:30 p.m., March 28 in Louisville.
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Click her to read The Intelligencer/News-Register Sports Editor Shawn Rine’s March 22, 2013, column on Alex Falk, “Falk, A Student of Game, Life.”