A first-year coach who turned around a program that won five games the season before with essentially little change to the roster heads up the Tennessee Sports Writers Association’s college basketball awards for the 2022-23 season.
Karen Booker’s revival of Trevecca Nazarene earned her the Pat Summitt TSWA Women’s Basketball Coach of the Year award announced Monday. She’s joined by junior guard Destinee Wells, who led Belmont’s transition to the Missouri Valley Conference as the Women’s Basketball Player of the Year.
Jerry Stackhouse, the Southeastern Conference’s Co-Coach of the Year, is the TSWA Men’s Basketball Coach of the Year after leading Vanderbilt to its most league wins since the 2015-16 season. Kendric Davis of Memphis is the men’s basketball player of the year after leading the Tigers to a second straight NCAA Tournament berth.
Booker, a Franklin native who was All-SEC as a player at Vanderbilt, was hired as Trevecca Nazarene’s sixth women’s coach last summer. She added only two freshmen and a transfer, who was a reserve, yet led the team to a 21-win season and the program’s first appearance in the NCAA Division II Championships.
It was the Trojans’ most wins in their 11-year tenure at the NCAA level. They also went undefeated at home for the first time in program history, finishing 14-0. Trevecca Nazarene made the Great Midwest Tournament as the No. 3 seed and advanced to the finals after being picked to finish 12th out of 13 teams in the preseason coaches’ poll. Booker led them to the No. 5 seed in the Midwest Regional.
Wells, who has since announced her transfer to Tennessee, was the only player in the nation to average more than 19 points and 4.5 assists while also shooting over 45 percent beyond the arc. She was named to the All-Missouri Valley Conference First Team, averaging 19.5 points, 4.9 assists, three rebounds and a steal per game.
She averaged 32.4 points over her final five games, including three MVC Tournament games and a WNIT road contest. Wells tied her career-best, scoring 35 points in the WNIT loss at Ball State. She set the single-season scoring record for Belmont’s NCAA era and leaves the program ranked sixth all-time with 1,648 career points.
Stackhouse also won the Ben Jobe National Minority Coach of the Year after leading the Commodores to 22 wins, their fifth-most victories in a single season over the past three decades. The 11 SEC wins marked just the third time with that many league victories or more in the same span.
Vanderbilt won 14 games at Memorial Gym, also the Commodores’ most since the 2015-16 season. Stackhouse led the Commodores to the NIT quarterfinals for a second straight season.
Davis made an immediate impact in his lone season at Memphis, leading the American Athletic Conference in scoring with 21.9 points a game, which ranked eighth nationally. He was the only Division I player to rank in the Top 20 for both points scored per game and assists with 5.4 per game.
He shot 41.4 percent from the floor, 34.6 percent from 3-point range and 85.4 percent at the free throw line. He ranked third nationally in free throws made and posted a career-high 42 points on Jan. 11, the fifth-most points in program history and one off the AAC record.
Davis became the first player to lead the AAC in scoring three times and in three straight seasons. He was a unanimous All-AAC First Team pick and AP All-America Honorable Mention after being a six-time AAC player of the week.
He set the AAC records for career points scored, total assists and free throws made. His 744 points scored this season topped coach Penny Hardaway for second-most all-time in Memphis history, 18 shy of Dajuan Wagner’s mark of 762.