The Great Lakes Valley Conference recently announced its 2009-2010 men’s and women’s basketball all-conference teams, and for the third straight year no University of Missouri-St. Louis player was picked for either team.
The players chosen for the men’s All-GLVC team include first team selections Jamar Smith (Southern Indiana), Billy Baptist (Quincy), Aaron Hill (Rockhurst), David Palmer (Northern Kentucky) and Desmond Stephens (Kentucky Wesleyan).
Smith was also named the league’s Men’s Player of the Year after leading his team to a 24-3 record and leading the league in scoring and three-point shooting. Smith’s name has also been mentioned among pro scouts as a player that might get picked in this June’s NBA Draft.
On the women’s side, first team All-GLVC members include Samantha Meissel (Indianapolis), Jessica Canary (Indianapolis), Lindsay Ballweg (Drury), Casse Morgan (Northern Kentucky) and Jennifer Turpel (Lewis).
Meissel was the choice for Women’s Player of the Year after leading her team to a 29-3 regular season record. She also led the GLVC in scoring this season.
The GLVC also selected a five-member all-conference second team, and a 10-member honorable mention team for both the men’s and women’s leagues. Among the 20 male and 20 female players chosen for all-conference honors this season, none came from UM-St. Louis.
The last UM-St. Louis player to be named to the all-GLVC squad was men’s player Brett Ledbetter in 2007 who was picked as an honorable mention. Jennifer Martin, a second-team selection in 2006, was the last UM-St. Louis women’s player picked for the all-conference team.
This year, final vote totals were not released, but there were several Triton players it seemed that should have at least received consideration. On the men’s side, guard Beaumont Beasley, sophomore, business, led the Tritons in scoring and ranked 13th in the league, at 14.9 points/game. He also ranked fifth in the league at 4.7 assists per game.
One aspect of his game that may have kept Beasley from earning all-conference honors was his shooting percentage. He finished the year as a 38 percent shooter from the floor, the lowest among starting point guards in the league and a far cry from the near 55 percent he shot in UM-St. Louis’ first 10 games of the year.
For the women, forward Hailee Deckard, sophomore, secondary education, battled injuries all season, but still managed to lead UM-St. Louis in scoring and rebounding with 11.4 points and 5.4 rebounds per game.
It was the injuries though to her back and knee that appeared to keep Deckard from putting up the type of numbers she seemed destined for at the beginning of the season—numbers that would have certainly earned her an all-conference slot.
Fellow Triton guard Kristi White, senior, accounting, who played her last game when UM-St. Louis lost to Indianapolis in the second round of the GLVC Championship Tournament, was another player who could have received all-conference consideration.
White was second on the team in scoring at 10.9 points per game and finished her career as a Triton as the school’s all-time leader in three-point shooting percentage, while ranking fifth in all-time three-pointers made and sixth in all-time assists.