Fort Lewis College’s basketball coaches are already hard at work recruiting ahead of the 2020-21 school year after the season ended Friday.
While the top eight teams in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference began conference tournament play Tuesday, the conference’s postseason awards were announced. FLC had three players honored in a vote by the coaches.
FLC junior forward Riley Farris was named a First Team All-RMAC selection in men’s basketball. For the FLC women, junior forward Jordan Carter was named to the second team, while freshman forward Jordan Vasquez was an honorable mention selection and perhaps overlooked by the conference’s coaches for the Freshman of the Year award.
The top-10 vote-getters made the first team and another 10 made the second team.
Farris finished second in the RMAC in scoring average at 23.9 points per game, which was the 12th-best mark in all of NCAA Division II men’s basketball. His 670 total points were most in the conference. He shot at the fourth-highest percentage in the conference (55.7%). He also made 80.4% of his free throws and averaged six rebounds per game.
The Fort Lewis men finished 13-15 overall and 7-15 in RMAC play to finish 13th in the conference.
Vasquez led the FLC women with 12.1 points and 6.6 rebounds per game. She led the RMAC with three offensive rebounds per game. She also shot at a high percentage at 50.6%, the second-best mark in the conference. Still, she was relegated to the honorable mention list and surpassed in Freshman of the Year voting by Western Colorado’s Hannah Cooper, who has averaged 9.7 points, 4.3 rebounds and more than three assists per game.
Carter was named to the second team after she scored 10.8 points and had 5.9 rebounds per game.
FLC finished 15-12 overall and 11-11 in the RMAC to miss the conference tournament by one game and place ninth in the conference.
Denali Pinto of Colorado School of Mines was named the women’s RMAC Player of the Year after she averaged 20.2 points per game her sophomore season. She shot 42% from the field and nearly 41% from 3-point range.
Dixie State’s guard Jack Pagenkopf was the men’s Player of the Year. The senior from Brooklyn, New York, averaged 14.5 points, six rebounds, six assists and two steals. Defensive Player of the Year went to Padiet Wang of University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, as he averaged 5.2 rebounds, 1.8 steals and one block per game while breaking the UCCS program record for steals.
Black Hills State’s Joel Scott was named Freshman of the Year. The forward from Monument averaged 17.5 points on 60.6% shooting and nearly 50% shooting from 3-point range. He also had six rebounds per game. Coach of the Year went to Ryan Thompson of Black Hills State, as the Yellow Jackets won a share of the regular-season championship along with Dixie State.
