He just broke his school’s scoring record. What’s next for Mr. Basketball candidate?
The vote is still out on who will be Kentucky’s next Mr. Basketball, but Marques Warrick has put his name in the Henry Clay record book alongside a previous one.
Warrick, a 6-foot-3 senior guard, scored 29 points Wednesday to overtake the school’s career scoring mark owned by Steve Miller, 1984’s Mr. Basketball and a member of the Blue Devils’ 1983 state championship team. Warrick has 1,854 points and counting, which eclipsed Miller’s mark of 1,828.
“(I feel) humble and blessed,” Warrick said after a 76-63 win over Lafayette in which he went 9-for-13 from three-point range. “A lot of hard work got me to this point, honestly. It’s a credit to my teammates over the years for getting me the ball and just being great teammates.”
Miller, who has been an assistant coach with his alma mater for the last three seasons and was inducted into the Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame last year, praised Warrick as a hard worker who never gets rattled.
“He is the best offensive scorer I’ve ever seen in high school,” Miller said. “It’s an honor to be able to pass the torch to him.”
During his playing days and in the years after, Miller said he didn’t even know he had the Blue Devils’ scoring mark, and he still doesn’t know how many points he had. The focus for his teams was winning, and that’s the message he and head coach Daniel Brown have for their team now. But he does offer a little bias as to who the next Mr. Basketball should be.
“Man, if he don’t get Mr. Basketball this year, something’s wrong,” Miller said. “But we’ve got a lot of season left to go. We’ve got to finish well in the district. Win the district, win the region and get to the state.”
Though fans have been making their voice heard in a non-scientific Kentucky.com poll that shows enthusiastic support for Region 14’s Joe Benton of Estill County and Region 16’s Sam O’Keefe of Lewis County, the actual vote by coaches, media members and past winners ends Friday. The 2020 Mr. Basketball will be announced April 5.
Over the last month, Warrick has built a solid case for the honor, scoring 33 points and 34 points, respectively, in back-to-back wins against top-10 opponents John Hardin and Ballard. The Northern Kentucky University commit averages 22.5 points per game.
Warrick may have passed Miller in scoring, and individual honors are nice, but what he and his team really want are championship trophies, specifically the big one presented in Rupp Arena in March.
“We’re really confident. Obviously, we have a 17-game winning streak,” Warrick said. “The goal from Day 1 was to go to Rupp Arena and not only that, win the state championship. We’ve got a really good shot at that. We’ve just got to keep grinding it out.”
District tournaments begin next week.
“We’re hoping to play well next week. That’s what matters,” Coach Brown said. “We’re playing well, right now, but next week is when you’ve got to play well. It’s going to be tough.”
