Perry again earns top honor

Staff report

Indianapolis

Youngstown State senior Kendrick Perry earned first team All-Horizon League honors for the third consecutive season — just the 13th player in league history to do so.

Perry also made the league’s all-defensive team for the second straight year, helping the Penguins (15-16, 6-10) finish seventh in the nine-team league.

Green Bay junior guard Keifer Sykes was named Horizon League player of the year after helping the Phoenix capture the league title, while teammate Alec Brown also earned first team honors and was named defensive player of the year.

Green Bay coach Brian Wardle earned coach of the year.

Oakland’s Travis Bader and Valparaiso’s LaVonte Dority also made the first team, while Cleveland State’s Bryn Forbes, Detroit’s Juwan Howard Jr., Oakland’s Corey Petros, Wright State’s AJ Pacher and Milwaukee’s Jordan Aaron made second team.

For the second time in three years, Perry led the Horizon League in overall scoring with 20.9 points per game. He scored at least 30 points times this season, including a career-high 35 against Milwaukee on Feb. 20.

He scored a league-best 647 points, which ranks sixth on the YSU single-season list and scored in double figures in all 31 games. His 60 3-pointers made are a career high and rank eighth on the school’s single-season chart. He is also just the seventh player in school history to make 60 3-pointers in a season.

Perry also ranked second in the league with 2.4 steals per game and a 2.4 assist-to-turnover ratio, tied for fourth with 4.3 assists per game, and ninth with a .505 field-goal percentage.

Perry, who is the Horizon League and Youngstown State all-time steals leader with 245, broke his own Youngstown State single-season steals record with 75 this year. Perry set the old record of 74 in 2011-12.

Perry is Youngstown State’s Division I scoring leader with 1,956 career points and ranks third on the all-time scoring list. Perry also ranks 12th on the Horizon League all-time scoring list.

The Penguins play at Oakland tonight in the first round of the Horizon League tournament.