— By Bill Cornwell
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — The Marshall men’s basketball program handed out honors to the team’s top performers from the 2022-2023 season at a reception at the Guyan Golf and Country Club.
Head Coach Dan D’Antoni said that this year’s team, which finished 24-8, was one of his favorites in a coaching career of nearly four decades.
“This is a special group that put up with me and moved our program forward,” D’Antoni said. “You aren’t going to find many groups as together as ours and it showed with one of the top records in school history.”
Unsurprisingly, the top award, the Hal Greer Most Outstanding Player Award, was given to fifth-year senior Taevion Kinsey.
Kinsey was named the Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year and was a member of the All-Conference first team.
Playing nearly 38 minutes on average, Kinsey scored a team-best 22.1 points per game along with 4.9 rebounds. He was also tops on the team with 173 assists and 55 steals
An award named after Coach D’Antoni’s brother, the Mike D’Antoni Mr. Marshall Award, was presented to rising senior guard Andrew Taylor.
Taylor averaged 20.2 points, joining Kinsey as the only Division I teammates to average better than 20 points. Taylor also chipped in with 4.7 rebounds per game, 149 assists and a team-high 67 steals.
A newcomer to the Marshall program received the Jon Elmore Long-Range Award in junior guard Kamdyn Curfman, a transfer from VMI.
Curfman shot 40.4 percent from behind the 3-point line while averaging 11.5 points. He shot just under 40 percent from the field and contributed 96 assists and 34 steals. Curfman, along with Kinsey and Taylor, averaged more than 35 minutes.
Sophomore forward Obinna Anochili-Killen was given the Charlie Slack Toughman Award for his work on the inside for the Herd last season.
The Lagos, Nigeria native who attended Chapmanville High School averaged nearly five rebounds and started all 32 contests. Anochili-Killen averaged 8.7 points and was second on the team with 45 blocks. He was also effective defensively with 32 steals.
True freshman Jacob Conner won the Bob Allen Most Improved Player award. The Dayton, Ohio native played in all 32 games and came off the bench to average five points and 3.7 rebounds in his reserve role.
He impressed defensively with 10 blocks and 41 steals. Conner was also the Herd’s top free throw shooter at 86.2 percent.
With the recent entry of 7-foot-1 freshman center Micah Handlogten into the NCAA Transfer Portal, D’Antoni says he and his staff are working to fill the void at center with some late recruiting.
“We are working both the portal and looking at any high school kids still looking to sign,” D’Antoni said. “We’re keeping all of our options open, but we have a good core group coming back next year and I’m excited to coach them.”
The 75-year old D’Antoni recently signed a three-year contract extension.
On Monday, Handlogten announced his new home. A recipient of the Sun Belt Freshman of the Year award in his lone campaign with the Herd, Handlogten will play at Florida as a sophomore and try his hand at the Power 5 Conference level.