NORFOLK, Va. – All five North Carolina Central University men's basketball starters have been voted to All-MEAC Teams, the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference announced Friday (March 6).
Senior point guard
Nimrod Hilliard garnered First Team All-MEAC honors, while senior forward
Jordan Parks, senior center
Karamo Jawara and senior guard
Anthony McDonald achieved Second Team All-MEAC recognition, and junior guard
Dante Holmes received Third Team All-MEAC merit.
Hilliard, a Lamar University transfer out of Madison, Wisconsin, tops the conference and is 10th in the nation in assists, averaging 6.4 helpers per contest with a total of 178 in 28 games. He is also 23rd in the league in scoring (11.6 points per game), 11th in field goal percentage (.483), and the best at the charity stripe (87.1 percent free-throw shooter). Parks, a 6-7, 200-pound forward out of Queens, New York, is the MEAC's third-leading rebounder (8.2 rebounds per game), ninth-leading scorer (14.9 points per game), 14th-leading shot blocker (0.9 rejections per game), and most accurate shooter with a field goal percentage of 64.2 percent, which places him third in the nation.
Jawara, the Eagles' lone four-year senior and native of Bergen, Norway, averages 7.9 points, 6.5 rebounds (13th in MEAC), 2.3 assists, 1.1 steals and 0.8 blocked shots per game. He also ranks fifth in the conference in defensive rebounds (5.5 per game) and fifth in minutes played (33.8 per game).
McDonald, a Mississippi Valley State University transfer from Aberdeen, Mississippi, tops the MEAC and ranks 11th in the nation with an average of 3.2 three-point field goals made per game, shooting 37.9 percent from behind the arc, which ranks eighth in the conference. He is the 15th-leading scorer in the league with 12.9 points per contest.
Holmes, a Florida Gulf Coast University transfer in his second season with the Eagles out of Baltimore, Maryland, is among the MEAC leaders in scoring (10.5 ppg, 27th) and steals (1.4 spg, 10th), while also averaging 4.3 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game.
As a team, NCCU posted an overall record of 24-6 and won the MEAC regular season title for the second straight year with an unblemished 16-0 conference record, marking the first time in school history the men's basketball team went unbeaten in league play.
The Eagles enter the MEAC Tournament as the No. 1 seed and will play the winner of the Bethune-Cookman/Coppin State game on Wednesday, March 11 at 6 p.m. inside the Norfolk (Va.) Scope Arena.
