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Indiana Women’s Basketball Player Mackenzie Holmes Named Big Ten Player of The Week
Indiana Women’s Basketball Junior forward Mackenzie Holmes has been named the Big Ten Player of the Week, announced by the league on Monday. Holmes averaged 26.5 points, 6.0 rebounds, 5.0 blocks and shot 75.9 percent from the floor in a pair of wins over Fairfield and No. 20 Ohio State last week where she also shot 50 percent from the 3-point line and 80 percent at the free-throw line. This marks her second player of the week award for the season and third of her career.
Against the Stags, she went 9-for-10 from the floor, posted five blocks and five rebounds, and went a perfect 5-for-5 from the free throw line in 24 minutes of work. In the win over No. 20 Ohio State, the Gorham, Maine native set a new career-high 30 points on 68 percent shooting to go along with seven rebounds and five blocks. Her 13 made field goals ties a career-high and became the first IU player to score 30 points since Amanda Cahill in 2018. In the win, Holmes became IU’s 30th career player to reach 1,000 points. Up next for Holmes and the #10 Hoosiers will resume play on Sunday, December 19th against Western Michigan.
Indiana Football Lands Defensive End Venson Sneed For 2022
Indiana has landed the commitment of 4-star defensive lineman Venson Sneed from Winter Park Florida. This comes after Sneed decommitted from Tennessee on November 30th. The 6’4” 244 lb strong side defensive end held offers from Kentucky, Iowa State, West Virginia, and Wake Forest.
His sheer size mixed with quality speed will lead to him setting up camp in the backfield for years to come. He has gotten after the quarterback at will in his high school career, and Tom Allen’s staff has taken notice. D-line coach Kevin Peoples has been very active signing players out of the transfer portal over the last two weeks, this time he dips into the high school ranks to land a high-quality player in Sneed. Sneed is ranked as the #31 overall defensive end in the Rivals 250 rankings.
Carmel and Center Grove Voted Out of the Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference
Carmel and Center Grove have been voted out of the Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference on Monday by the principals from the league’s six remaining schools in a unanimous vote. The vote was prompted by interest from Carmel and Center Grove in joining the Hoosier Crossroads Conference, an eight-team league currently made up of the suburban schools of Avon, Brownsburg, Fishers, Franklin Central, Hamilton Southeastern, Noblesville, Westfield, and Zionsville. It is expected the HCC will vote on Carmel and Center Grove’s membership in coming days.
The remaining MIC schools pre-empted the potential move to the HCC on Monday with an announcement that Ben Davis, Lawrence Central, Lawrence North, North Central, Pike and Warren Central were planning to move forward regardless of the HCC vote. The MIC stated it will honor current contracts through the 2022-23 season, but plans to move forward as a six-team league by the spring of 2022.
In a letter signed by the six MIC principals, the league cited Article V, section 4 of the MIC constitution as grounds to remove Carmel and Center Grove “with a unanimous vote of the remaining schools and just cause.” “This vote will allow these two schools to seek a conference that aligns with their visions,” the letter stated.
What are those visions? Administrators from Carmel and Center Grove had not publicly commented on the conference realignment situation and asked the MIC for confidentiality when the schools applied for membership to the HCC two weeks ago. The MIC administrators honored that confidentiality until Monday’s letter.
The HCC was established in 2000 with Avon, Brownsburg, HSE, Noblesville, Westfield, and Zionsville and the Lafayette-area schools of Harrison and McCutcheon. Lafayette Jeff was added in 2003 and Fishers in 2006 to make it a 10-team conference. In 2014-15, the three Lafayette schools joined the North Central Conference. Prior to the 2018-19 school year, Franklin Central was added to the HCC to make it an eight-team conference.
The MIC began in 1996-97 as a six-team conference. Ben Davis, North Central and Warren Central were independents at the time, Lawrence North in the Central Suburban Conference, Center Grove in the South-Central Conference and Carmel in the Olympic Athletic Conference. Terre Haute North and Terre Haute South were accepted as members for the 1997-98 school year.
The league continued with those eight schools until the Terre Haute schools were replaced by Lawrence Central and Pike almost a decade ago.
The MIC has been the premier high school sports conference in the state, arguably in all of the Midwest, since its inception in 1996. The eight-team league is a powerhouse. A juggernaut. You can run down the list of accomplishments, starting with four different MIC schools winning all nine Class 6A football state championships since a sixth class was added in 2013. In five of those games, the runner-up was also from the MIC.
Boys’ and girls’ basketball are similar. The MIC has won the past four Class 4A state championships in boys’ basketball by three different schools and three of those were intraconference games in the state finals. Since 2010, the MIC owns seven boys’ basketball state titles. In girls’ basketball, four different MIC schools have won Class 4A state titles since 2010.
Center Grove Defensive Lineman Caden Curry to Announce College Choice
Center Grove Football standout Caden Curry has a decision date set. The Mr. Football position award winner for defensive line and a four-star prospect at defensive end, will make his announcement at 3:30pm, this afternoon in the school cafeteria. Curry, rated as the #88 overall prospect nationally in the senior class, took official visits to Indiana, Alabama and Ohio State this fall. Coaches from all three schools were in this week to visit with Curry, who finished his senior season with 65 tackles, including 24 for a loss, and seven sacks for the Class 6A undefeated state champions.
The early signing day for football is Wednesday through Friday. Most of the top recruits in the country will sign during the December signing period, which was instituted in 2017. Curry helped Center Grove to a 28-0 record and back-to-back 6A state titles. He also scored five touchdowns as a senior. Curry previously cut his list down to Indiana, Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Oregon. Should Curry commit to Indiana, he would join 2019 Center Grove Graduate Trayce Jackson-Davis who is a junior on the Hoosiers basketball squad and won Indiana Mr. Basketball in 2019. Center Grove is located in Greenwood, Indiana, 45 minutes North of Bloomington.
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