🏅 Amari Evans Wins DPOY, Jayden Wilkins Next Up

Amari Evans took home the Defensive Player of the Year, as he was the best perimeter defender in all of OTE this season. RWE's Jayden Wilkins took home the inaugural Next Up award, which is given out to the best underclassmen in the league 🔒 (2 min read)

Author

Miles Lally
February 28, 2024

Evans Wins DPOY, Wilkins Is Next Up

The City Reapers Amari Evans took home his first ever Defensive Player of the Year award as the league’s premiere on-ball perimeter defender. When opposing ball-handlers made their way down the court, there was no player they wanted to see less on the other side than Evans, as he made his living hounding ball-handlers and taking teams out of their offensive sets early 🐕

Evans was the definition of a pest on the ball, generating the most steals in the league this season with 35 and the second most steals per game at 2.2 SPG. Evans notched multi-steal efforts in ten out of the 16 games he played in this season 🔒

Evans strongest effort of the season came in the Reapers game against the YNG Dreamerz on February 15th, where he notched a season-high five steals, tied for the third most in a single-game this season. In that game, Evans was primarily matched up against league MVP Eli Ellis, who he held to 11 points through the first 30 minutes of the game with stifling one-on-one defense that left Ellis immensely frustrated for most of the night 🗜️

RWE’s Jayden Wilkins was named the winner of the first inaugural Next Up Award, as he stepped up for an injury-riddled RWE squad and was integral in leading them to a late-season surge into the playoffs. The Next Up award is awarded to the best underclassmen (freshman or sophomore) in the league 👀

Wilkins set multiple records for underclassmen in what was his first year as a member of OTE. Before the season even began, Wilkins made history when he won the OTE Takeover three-point contest, becoming the first ever underclassmen to win the event. In the very first game of the season, Wilkins became the first ever freshman in league history to score a bucket, as he knocked down a triple at the end of the second quarter 🤝

Deeper into the season, as Wilkins' role began to expand, he became the first ever under-classmen to win an OTE Player of the Week award (read more). Wilkins helped lead RWE to their first multi-win week of the season, thanks in large part to the greatest scoring stretch in a game this season, when Wilkins scored 20-straight points to close out a win over Rolling Loud on February 1st. In that game, Wilkins knocked down seven triples, tied for the second most in a game by any player this season 🏹

Amari Evans will take the court again on Friday evening at 7PM in a Semi-Final battle against the Cold Hearts on Prime Video. Jayden Wilkins and the rest of RWE are set to take on the #1 YNG Dreamerz in the semi-finals, with Game 1 set to take place at 9PM on Friday on YouTube 📺

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