Very happy for Holden and Mackey. Kind of crazy that after having CJ and Gabe on the All-PL teams the past two years, neither makes it this year and we have two new guys make the team. Holden has been terrific in PL play and playing with a lot of confidence. Nice to see a player progress over his 4 years and continue to get better the way Holden did. Still don’t understand why he didn’t get more minutes against Xavier in the tournament last year.
Tough for Gabe to make the All-PL squad for two straight years then watch CJ go down to become “the man” and not have the conference season he would have liked. It had nothing to do with his effort or heart, it just seems that he and the team didn’t make the adjustments after CJ went down for him to be the focal point and Holden and Mackey seemed to shoulder more of the load. I also think the Gabe exclusion might have partly had to do with high expectations and voter boredom. He has been a pretty consistent player for 4 years, and I think it’s possible that the PL coaches rewarded Holden for his improvement over Gabe for his consistency. Just a thought.
Would have liked to see JG get All-Rookie, not because I thought he deserved it necessarily, but just as a confidence booster heading into the tournament and offseason.