MBB | Gray Named the Top Player in the OUA for 2nd Consecutive Year

For the second consecutive season the OUA Men’s Basketball MVP award will be coming to the Nickel City. After leading the league in scoring, third year guard, Kadre Gray, is the first back-to-back winner of the honour since Carleton’s Phil Scrubb won three years in a row from 2011 to 2014.

After being named the OUA and U SPORTS Rookie of the Year and earning OUA First-Team All-Star honours in the 2016-17 season, Toronto’s Gray was last year’s OUA and U SPORTS men’s basketball player of the year and the OUA and U SPORTS Male Athlete of the Year, lofty accolades that he is one step closer to repeating. Gray has seen his scoring improve in each of his three seasons. Notching a league best 23.2 points per game in his rookie season, he upped the ante, scoring 24.4 points per game last season to once again lead the OUA and rank second in U SPORTS. Gray took those numbers to a whole new level this season, pouring in 620 points in just 20 games, good for an OUA and U SPORTS best 31.0 points per game, more than 4 ppg ahead of the next closest player. He also finished atop the OUA and second in the nation in passing with 6.2 APG and grabbed 7.4 rebounds per contest, ranking him 14th in the OUA

The league showed just how difficult it is to defend Gray, sending him to the free throw line 188 times this season, a spot from which he converted 160 of those shots, both OUA and U SPORTS highs. Gray also owns the two highest single game scoring totals this season, tallying 48 points against Lakehead in November and 45 points when the Voyageurs took down the then top-ranked Ryerson Rams in February. On top of his shooting prowess, Gray notched a triple-double this season and a double-double in another five games.

Gray’s success did not go unnoticed this year either as he was called up to the Canadian senior men’s national team in late November to compete in a pair of FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 Americas Qualifiers games against Venezuela and Brazil.

Gray will now look to defend his U SPORTS hardware when their major awards are announced in March.