2020-21 G-MAC All-Conference Awards
Winning the conference Freshman of the Year award in any sport naturally leads to big expectations for a player's career to come.
It's safe to say that Hillsdale College sophomore men's basketball player Patrick Cartier has lived up to those expectations, and quickly.
Just one year after winning Great Midwest Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year honors in his debut season, Cartier has claimed the highest honor given out by the G-MAC in his sport, winning G-MAC Men's Basketball Player of the Year.
Cartier's top nod is one of several awards claimed by the Chargers, who rampaged through the G-MAC to finish with a 19-1 record in the regular season and won the conference crown by a full three games over runner-up Findlay.
Also coming in for a major award from the G-MAC is head coach John Tharp, who repeated as the conference's Coach of the Year after guiding the Chargers to the outright title.
All five Hillsdale starters also made either the G-MAC first team, second team or defensive team. Cartier and senior forward Austen Yarian earned first-team honors, senior guards Connor Hill and Davis Larson each picked up a second-team All-G-MAC nod, and sophomore Tavon Brown was named to the G-MAC All-Defensive team.
Cartier's honor is both well-deserved and also entirely unsurprising for a player who's dominated the conference Player of the Week awards throughout the 2020-21 campaign.
The Brookfield, Wisconsin native led the G-MAC in scoring with 20.4 points per game, and not only led the G-MAC in field goal percentage but also sits in the top 10 nationally at 64.7 percent shooting from the floor.
More impressive than raw numbers for Cartier was his consistency. Regardless of the night, the matchup, or what defenses opponents threw at him, the sophomore delivered at a high level, finishing in double-figures in all 21 games with 12 games of 20-plus points and four double-doubles.
That consistent productivity played a big factor in Hillsdale's 17-game win streak, giving the Chargers a strong offensive foundation in every contest that's made manufacturing a path to victory much easier.
Cartier is just the fourth player in Hillsdale men's basketball history to earn Conference Player of the Year honors, and all of the other three – Ted Haputman, Dave Springer and Kyle Cooper – went on to earn national All-American honors, perhaps a sign that more recognition could be coming Cartier's way later this spring.
As impressive as Cartier has been, he's been far from doing it alone for the Chargers, as Hillsdale's slew of G-MAC honors shows. Joining Cartier on the All-G-MAC first team is senior forward Austen Yarian, who also had a career year to build on the All-G-MAC second team honors he received as a junior.
Yarian averaged a career best 13.1 points per game in 2020-21, showcasing both a developed interior game and impressive shooting touch from 3-point range for a 6-foot-8 forward. Not just a scorer, the Cleveland, Ohio native was critical to the Chargers' offense as a distributor as well, averaging 3.4 assists per game, a number usually reserved for point guards, as well as 6.4 rebounds per game. Also a plus defender, Yarian's versatility makes him the perfect player to pair with Cartier for what is unquestionably the best post tandem in the G-MAC, if not the entire Midwest at the Division II level.
Representing Hillsdale on the All-G-MAC second team are graduating seniors Connor Hill and Davis Larson. The second team honor is the first of Hill's career, and a fitting capstone for a player who went from a little-used reserve as a freshman to the team's sixth man as a sophomore to the Chargers' point guard and minutes leader as a senior.
Hill averaged 11.9 points and a team-high 3.9 assists in 2020-21. He came on strong in the stretch run with double-digit scoring nights in seven of the Chargers' final eight regular season games, including the only three 20-plus point games of his career, to help Hillsdale clinch the outright G-MAC title.
An 84.1% free throw shooter this year, Hill's poise under pressure and ability to knock down clutch free throws play a critical role in the Chargers' near-perfect record in close contests in 2020-21.
Larson, meanwhile, came into the year with question marks after suffering a season-ending ACL tear as a junior, but quickly laid the doubts about his form to rest with another strong season to finish his career as a Charger. The senior averaged 11 points, 4.2 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game and used his impressive skill set to ably fill whatever role Hillsdale needed him to fill on a given night, whether that was aggressively attacking defenders off the dribble, spacing the floor with outside shooting, locking down opposing players as a defensive ace or creating opportunities for others as a patient and steady facilitator.
The honor is Larson's third All-G-MAC award of his career, after earning first-team honors as a sophomore and second-team honors as a senior.
Last, but not least, sophomore Tavon Brown picked up the first All-G-MAC recognition of his career, earning a spot on the conference All-Defensive team. A rangy 6-foot-8 forward, Brown was the linchpin of the best defense in the G-MAC this season, as Hillsdale took full advantage of his ability to guard all five positions effectively to force matchups into their favor and neutralize other teams' pick-and-roll attacks.
Brown averaged 7.1 points per game and led the Chargers in both rebounds (7.3 per game) and blocks (36 total) on the season.
Behind it all was Tharp, who now has earned back-to-back G-MAC Coach of the Year honors in a season when the Chargers posted the best regular season winning percentage in school history, and won just the program's sixth outright conference championship in its 120-year history.
Forced to rebuild his coaching staff from scratch in the offseason, Tharp made excellent hires in assistants Keven Bradley, Eric Weiss and David Choi, and he and his staff pushed all the right buttons throughout the season to help the Chargers to rarefied heights.
Along the way, Tharp also reached several milestones, surpassing 450 wins for his collegiate career and 250 wins at Hillsdale College this season, and also becoming the longest-tenured head coach in Charger basketball history in his 14th season, surpassing Dwight Harwood's 13 years in charge in the 30s and 40s.
While Hillsdale has already brought home some serious hardware, the Chargers are focused on still adding to their collection this season.
Hillsdale faces Malone at 5 p.m. Friday at home in the G-MAC semifinal looking to move one step closer to the program's first conference tournament crown since 1995. Beyond that, a shot at the NCAA Division II tournament looms after the Chargers were announced as the projected top seed in the Atlantic Region earlier this week.