Texas A&M’s Destiny Pitts was named to the Ann Meyers Drysdale Award watch list for the second straight season. The award annually recognizes the best shooting guard in women’s college basketball.
Pitts joins All-American Chennedy Carter, now in the WNBA as the only A&M players to be associated with the award.
Aggies Coach Gary Blair told reporters, including the MSR, last week that the Detroit-born Pitts might be the best three-point shooter he’d coached, and that’s saying a lot since he had Carter, a scoring machine who just completed her pro rookie season.
“She’s not going to hurt you with her blazing speed…but if you give her an open three, she is going to get a great look at it,” Blair declared about Pitts, in her first season at A&M after three seasons in Minnesota.
“I really enjoy Destiny as a person more than anything,” Blair continued. “She’s been fun to get to know, a fun-loving kid.”
ESPN.com in its SEC preseason preview named Pitts its Newcomer of the Year.
HBCU sports notes
The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) released its 2020-21 men’s and women’s basketball schedule. It features a 16-game conference slate, including 10 divisional and six cross-divisional contests beginning January 9 through February 20. The cross-divisional schedule, which runs through January 25, will include men’s and women’s doubleheaders.
Maryland-Eastern Shore last week became the second MEAC school to cancel sports for 2020-21 due to the coronavirus. Bethune-Cookman opted out in October, canceling all sports for the same reason.
NBA draft ICYMIs
The MSR asked top overall pick Anthony Edwards shortly after he was drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves on his relocating from Atlanta, the nation’s fourth-largest Black-majority city, to the Twin Cities, whose Black population is under 20%. “As long as they like me for who I am,” said the 19-year-old young man, who played one season at the University of Georgia. “I don’t think me being Black and being from Atlanta, and being around a lot of Blacks … and going to Minnesota around a lot of Caucasian people” will be a concern, he believed.
Edwards is the 13th college freshman selected with the top pick in the last 14 years.
Leonard Hamilton (Florida State) and Penny Hardaway (Memphis) were the only Black HCs to each have two lottery picks. Five first-rounders in this year’s Draft also were coached by Black coaches.
Eight players of Nigerian descent were drafted for the first time ever.
Daniel Oturu was the first Minnesota player drafted (33rd overall by Minnesota) since Kris Humphries in 2004. He might have been the first player drafted last week who wore three team caps—the Wolves drafted him, then traded him to New York, who traded him to the Los Angeles Clippers—all in the same night.
Minneapolis De La Salle grad Tyrell Terry (31st overall by Dallas) was the first Stanford freshman to be taken in the NBA Draft, and the sixth Pac-12 freshman overall, including Hopkins grad Zeke Nnaji (No. 22 overall by Denver), who played at Arizona.
Globe-tracking the Lynx
Mikiah Herbert Harrigan, Temi Fabenle and Erica McCall’s respective foreign teams are in action this weekend. Damiris Dantas posted a double-double (10 points, 13 rebounds) in her team’s big win last week.
