Marty Gordon
NRVsports@ourvalley.org
Radford High School picked up its second straight boys’ basketball title earlier this month, and on Friday their coach and point guard both garnered state honors.
– Morton-Robertson named state player of the year
– Radford head coach Rick Cormany received 1A coach of the year honors.
Sophomore Guard Quinton Morton-Robertson was named the state’s 1A player of year, and Rick Cormany is the 1A coach of the year.
Eight players were chosen on the first team and eight players were selected for the second team regardless of position. Only players selected to first team all-region teams were eligible for selection to the all-state team.
The state title was Cormany’s second straight and fifth overall. The coach said the honor to Quinton, or “Q” as he is called, is well deserved.
“It was a well-deserved honor for Q. He averaged 20 points for the year but around 25 for the three state games, and he was forced to score more this year than he likes. He is a true point guard and prefers to distribute the ball first,” Cormany said.
Morton-Robertson scored 593 total points and averaged 20.4 points per game this season. He shot 51 percent from the field and 44.2 percent from behind the three-point line. He also pulled down 87 rebounds.
Morton-Robertson is only a sophomore, and Cormany believes he has a lot of potential.
“I definitely think he will continue to get stronger and better. He is a D1 (Division I college) point guard. Not sure the level yet,” he said
As a team, the Bobcats scored an average of 61.3 points per game this season, only allowing an average of 47 points by their opponents.
Cormany said he was humbled being named state coach of the year, and credited both his players and assistant coaches for a job well done.
“Great players and especially great assistants make good head coaches and I have both,” he said
Looking back at this year’s team, Cormany labeled them a “super” group of guys that grew up as the season went along.
“They were very dedicated and committed to the team and each other and very unselfish. They only cared about one thing and that was trying to win. They never missed practice unless they were too sick to get out of bed, and practiced and played when they were hurting. This was simply an awesome group,” he said
Radford will move up a classification from 1A to 2A next year because of an increase in student enrollment, thus this will be the school’s last in the lower ranks at least for awhile.
But Cormany doesn’t see the move negatively impacting the team, as he really only loses one starter from this year’s team.
“I think they have to stay hungry and continue to work in the off season to get better. I’m excited about moving up. But there was also a lot of quality competition at the 1A level. Three of our five past titles were at the Division 2 (2A) level,” he concluded.
For now, Cormany will just have to look across the room at Radford High School and smile at the 2016 and 2017 state trophies.