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Princeton University Athletics
Walton Named First-Team All-Ivy League In Men's Basketball
March 09, 2001 | Men's Basketball
March 9, 2001
Nate Walton, who carried Princeton through the final three weeks to a championship, has been named first-team All-Ivy League. Walton's selection marked the 10th time in the last 13 seasons that Princeton's center was a first-team All-Ivy selection.
The Ivy League's awards, voted upon by the league's eight head coaches, were announced Friday. Princeton won the Ivy League championship and will find out its NCAA tournament seed and opponent Sunday evening.
Konrad Wysocki became the fifth Princeton player to be named Ivy Rookie of the Year. He joined Brian Taylor (1972), Bob Roma (1977), Rick Hielscher (1992) and Chris Young (1999).
Columbia's Craig Austin was named Player of the Year.
Ahmed El-Nokali was a second-team all-league pick, while Kyle Wente was named honorable mention. "On our team," El-Nokali said, "there's no room for individual achievement and goals. We just focus on winning. It's definitely an honor, and I'm sure it's something I'll appreciate more as I get older. But for now, we're just glad we won the championship, and anyone on our team would trade any honor he gets to be part of what we're going through now."
Walton was one of four unanimous selections for the first-team, along with Austin, Harvard's Dan Clemente and Brown's Earl Hunt. The final first-team pick was Penn's Lamar Plummer.
Joining El-Nokali on the second team were Yale's Neil Yanke, Penn's Geoff Owens and Ugonna Onyekwe and Brown's Alai Nuuallittia.
Wente was one of six honorable mention choices, along with Harvard's Patrick Harvey and Elliott Prasse-Freeman, Dartmouth's Greg Buth, Yale's Chris Leanza and Columbia's Chris Weidemann.
Walton, a senior from San Diego, leads Princeton in scoring, rebounding, assists and steals. He is the third player in school history to lead the team in scoring, rebounding and assists in the same season, and he could become the first to do so in all four of those categories. He had nine points, eight rebounds, seven assists and six steals in Princeton's 68-52 Ivy-clinching win over Penn Tuesday night.
Walton also became the fourth player in school history with two seasons of at least 100 assists. He averages 10.5 points, 5.6 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game.
El-Nokali, a junior from Pittsburgh, played 539 of 560 minutes in Princeton's 14 Ivy League games. He averaged 8.6 points per game and 1.9 rebounds, and he led the Ivy League by shooting 82.5% from the foul line.
Wente, a sophomore from Effingham, ,Ill., who played only 18 minutes last year as a freshman, averaged eight points and 3.1 rebounds while shooting 51% from the field.
Wysocki, a freshman from Lollar, Germany, averaged 5.8 points and 3.8 rebounds per game and shot 56.7%, 60% in Ivy games. Princeton was 9-0 in Ivy games in which he played at least 20 minutes.