Bucknell University Athletics
Bucknell Men's Basketball Awards Announced at Annual Backcourt Club Banquet
5/4/2011 8:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
May 4, 2011
LEWISBURG, Pa. - Head coach Dave Paulsen and the Bucknell men's basketball program hosted the annual Backcourt Club Awards Banquet on Sunday afternoon, and senior guard Darryl Shazier and sophomore center Mike Muscala shared the Benton A. Kribbs Award as the team's most valuable players for 2010-11. Graduate student Stephen Tyree, senior G.W. Boon and junior Bryan Cohen also walked off with awards as the Bison celebrated their Patriot League championship season.
In addition to the award winners, Paulsen has announced that Cohen, Muscala and junior-to-be Bryson Johnson have been elected co-captains for the 2011-12 season.
Shazier also won the Kribbs Award last year, and he became the 12th Bucknell player to take home MVP honors more than once since the award was instituted after the 1974-75 season. Muscala, who was the Patriot League Player of the Year this season, is the first sophomore to win the Kribbs Award since Chris McNaughton in 2004-05.
Shazier was a team co-captain and a First Team All-Patriot League selection in 2010-11. He led the Patriot League in assists at 5.4 per game, and his 185-to-50 assist-to-turnover ratio ranked No. 2 in the nation. He also averaged 8.3 points per game and ranked among the conference leaders in steals. Shazier played in 126 career games, one shy of the school record, and his 498 career assists ranked fourth on Bucknell's all-time list.
His 185 assists this season were third-most on Bucknell's single-season list, just 12 shy of the record. Shazier was named to the Riley Wallace All-America Team, made up of eight seniors who were a major part of their team's success by contributing in all phases of the game without a lot of national attention. On Tuesday night he was presented the Lee S. "Bud" Ranck Award at the Senior Athletics Awards Banquet.
Muscala was an AP Honorable Mention All-America and First Team All-Patriot League pick this year, in addition to becoming only the third sophomore to win PL Player of the Year honors. He was also named the Patriot League Tournament MVP after leading the Bison to their first championship since 2006.
The 6-11 center paced the Bison in scoring (14.9), rebounding (7.3), field-goal percentage (.517) and blocked shots (67) this season. He led the Patriot League in blocks and ranked third in field-goal percentage, fourth in rebounding and seventh in scoring. Muscala's 67 blocks were third-most in a season by any Bucknell player, and after only two seasons he already ranks third on the school's career blocks list with 132.
Muscala, who also hit a buzzer-beater in a road win over a Richmond team that later went on to the Sweet Sixteen, became just the 13th player in program history and the first since J.R. Holden 1997-98 to record 500 points in a season (he finished with 507). Off the court, Muscala earned Capital One Academic All-District honors and was a member of the Academic All-Patriot League Team.
Paulsen presented Boon with the Coaches' Award, a well-deserved honor for an important and often underrated player for the Bison over the last four years. Boon was a weapon on the perimeter and was also asked to play inside a power forward at 6'4".
Boon averaged 8.7 points and 3.8 rebounds while knocking down 41 3-pointers as the team's "sixth man" in 2010-11. Like Shazier, Boon played in all 126 games over the last four years, one shy of the program record. His 160 career 3-point field goals are seventh-most in program history, and he also ranks in the top-20 all-time in 3-point accuracy.
Tyree received the Malcolm E. Musser Award for Leadership for the second year in a row. One of the team's emotional leaders, Tyree returned to Bucknell for a fifth season after missing his junior year with a knee injury, but he suffered a blow when the injured the same knee in a preseason practice. He postponed surgery and eventually played in 11 games on a torn ACL. He provided some quality minutes off the bench when needed, particularly in Bison victories over Cornell and Holy Cross.
Cohen won his third straight Thomas A. Thompson Award for Spirit, Intensity and Outstanding Defensive Play. He joins Abe Badmus (2005-07), Dan Blankenship (2001-03) and Martin Gilliard (1997-99) as three-time winners of the Thompson Award.
This season Cohen became the first two-time Patriot League Defensive Player of the Year, and he is the fourth Bucknell player to win it in the seven-year history of the award. Regularly assigned to the opposition's top offensive player, Cohen spearheaded a Bison defense that led the Patriot League in field goal percentage defense (.396) and 3-point defense (.317) and ranked second in scoring defense (63.9). While keeping many of the league's stars in check defensively, Cohen also produced 7.0 points per game and shot a career-best 44.1 percent from 3-point range.
Paulsen also announced that Doug Birdsong, "The Voice of the Bison," is the 2011 winner of the Backcourt Club Award, presented for outstanding contributions to the program. Birdsong just completed his 11th season as the team's excitable play-by-play announcer.
Boon, Shazier and Tyree all offered remarks at the banquet, reflecting on their careers in Orange & Blue, and each was presented his framed jersey and his locker stool emblazoned with his name and number.
Cohen, Johnson and Muscala will all be first-year team captains next season. The team will return four starters and 10 lettermen as it looks to repeat as Patriot League champion. Johnson was a Second Team All-Patriot League selection as a sophomore and broke the Bucknell single-season record with 99 3-pointers.
In 2010-11 the Bison finished 25-9, recording the second-most victories in program history. They had a 23-2 stretch from Dec. 1 through the Patriot League championship game victory over Lafayette. Bucknell made its fifth NCAA Tournament appearance, where it dropped its first game to eventual national champion Connecticut in Washington, D.C.
