Every player who plays at the McDonald’s All-America game held here in Chicago at the United Center starts off being the possible game MVP. With two rosters chock-full of great, super-star players, including McDonald’s own POY, the decision who will be crowned the game MVP is a race to performance and game-ending herorics.
Last night was another difficult task as the East took a nail-biting 79-78 win over the West. The MVP came down to a last-second, deserved decision for the East’s 6-2 forward Alexis Prince (Orlando Edgewater, FL) who’s headed to Final Four contender Baylor.
This wasn’t the easiest of decisions. Headed into the second half the West trailed the East 40-33 and the outstanding players in the first half were the East’s Brittney Sykes (Newark University, NJ-Syracuse) and Alexis Prince (FL). The West had Morgan Tuck (IL) doing their key scoring and tied the game at 50 with a layup at the 13:55 mark. The choices at this point were back and forth between these three names.
The game surprise then came into focus as the West’s Nirra Fields (Santa Ana Mater Dei, CA-UCLA), who was a member of the Canadian u19 National Team that beat the USA u19 team in a bracket game at the FIBA u19 world championships in Chile this past summer. Fields, who is familiar with a few of the McDonald’s All-Americans who played for USA went off for 14 points on 7-8 shooting all during a eight minute stretch in the middle of the second half to keep the West close.
The next rotation came and went and no more Fields in the game. With the two West names of Tuck and Fields and the East with Sykes and Prince it got more compounded with a scoring spurt from Bria Holmes (Hamden Hillhouse, CT-West Virginia) and then at the end from McDonald’s POY Breanna Stewart who scored seven tough straight points for the East after a scattered shooting in the first half.
Game time under a minute, six names, Tuck still in, Fields out for the West trying to pull the game out. Four names for the East, Sykes and Holmes out, Stewart and Prince in. Whoever made the last shot for the East in the last 16 seconds could affect the vote.
East inbounds, Stewart gets hammered, no call. Prince gathers up the ball, a shot and she’s hit too, no call. Brashara Graves (Clarksville, TN-Tennessee) gets the rebound, and a foul with :03 to play. The West team and coaches are upset, everyone smelled OT. Graves hits one and the game is over. – Simple, your MVP is Alexis Prince.
Later in the press room those who watched the game were still wondering why the West didn’t put their leading scorer with 20 points with seven to play back into the game. In my mind, she could have been the co-MVP. Not bad for an all-star Canadian who went to high school in California.
