For the third season in a row the Green Bay Phoenix have a player named First Team All-Horizon League.

Senior guard JayQuan McCloud became the latest player to earn the honor after averaging 18.7 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 5.0 assists per game during the conference season. He ranked in the top 5 in the league in assists (2^nd), scoring (4^th), and free throw shooting (3^rd, 86.0%) and in the top 15 in assist/turnover ratio (8^th), steals (11^th, 1.2 per game), field goal percentage (12^th, 42.6%), and rebounding (15^th).

According to SportsReference.com McCloud also recently became just the second player since 1994 to score 1,000 career points in a Green Bay uniform in only two seasons, joining Sandy Cohen who accomplished the feat last season scoring 1,031 points in just 60 games.

McCloud joins an exclusive club of just 11 other players in the program’s Division I era to be named first team all-conference, a list that includes Tony Bennett, Jeff Nordgaard, Ben Berlowski, Javier Mendiburu, Ryan Tillema, Rahmon Fletcher, Alec Brown, Keifer Sykes, Carrington Love, Khalil Small, and Sandy Cohen.

Freshman guard Amari Davis was also honored by the league in a big way on Monday as he was named the Horizon League Freshman of the Year.

The 6’3” guard is the first player in program history to win the award which began back in 2014. The award was called the Newcomer of the Year prior to 2014 and no Phoenix player had won that either besides Tony Bennett back in 1989 in the Mid-Continent Conference (now the Summit League).

Davis was named Freshman of the Week a record ten times this season and ends a 7-year drought of Green Bay not having a player named to the All-Freshman Team. He joins Bennett, Mike King (2000), Chris Sager (2001), Brandon Morris (2004), Mike Schachtner (2006), Rahmon Fletcher (2008), Alec Brown (2011), Keifer Sykes (2012), and Jordan Fouse (2013) as players that have been named to the All-Freshman or All-Newcomer Team in program history.

Davis was also named to the Horizon League’s All-Horizon Third Team and finished the regular season 9^th in the conference in scoring during league play at 15.8 points per game while shooting 47.9% from the floor which ranked 5^th.

Linc Darner contract extended another season

Head coach Linc Darner’s contract now runs through the 2025/2026 season thanks to Green Bay’s third place regular season finish this year. His contract includes an automatic one year extension for his team finishing in the top four.

Darner’s original deal signed in 2015 was a 5-year contract through the 2020 season but he received a two year extension for making the NCAA Tournament in 2016, two separate one year extensions thanks to a clause in his contract regarding the departures of former Athletic Director Mary Ellen Gillespie and former Chancellor Gary Miller, a one year extension for finishing fourth last season, and now another extension this season taking him through April of 2026.

Darner is reportedly making $230,000 per season which is towards the bottom of the conference in head coaching salary.

Krash the Kress attendance down again

Attendance was down more than 9% compared to last year for this year’s homecoming game on campus at the Kress Events Center.

A lively crowd of 3,369 fans – a season high – attended Saturday night’s 74-67 victory over Cleveland State in the third annual “Krash the Kress” game. That is down from 3,720 fans that attended last year’s victory over Milwaukee and down from 3,872 from the first edition of the event back in 2018.

Overall attendance hit a new 34-year low this season as Green Bay averaged under 2,000 fans per game for the first time since 1986. Not including the Concordia-Chicago game (numbers not available), a total of 25,157 fans attended games this year for an average of 1,935 fans per game, down 8% from last season’s 2,107 fans per game and down nearly 46% from Brian Wardle’s final season in 2015 when Green Bay averaged 3,581 fans per game.

The Phoenix will play at least one more home game on Thursday night at the Resch Center and could potentially play a few more home games in the postseason like last year’s CIT run. Green Bay played three home games at the Kress Center during the CIT last season.

(Photo via Green Bay Athletics)