Hilliard named CIAA Men’s Basketball Player of the Year

April Emory
February 21, 2008

The CIAA Men’s Basketball Coaches Association selected Anthony Hilliard, a guard at ECSU, as the 2008 CIAA men’s Player of the Year. Hilliard, a junior, becomes the first ECSU player since Nate Higgs in 1993 and the sixth Viking overall to receive the honor. Ironically Higgs was a teammate of current ECSU Head Coach Shawn Walker. Other past honorees include Mike Gale (1971), Glen Windley (1973), Charlie Carr (1975) and Arthur Gaskins (1981). This season Hilliard leads the CIAA in both scoring and rebounding and for the second straight year is the only men’s basketball player in the conference averaging a double-double. This season, the Fayetteville, NC native was named CIAA Player of the Week four times. In NCAA Division II, he ranks 17th and 3rd in scoring and rebounding, respectively. Hilliard was an outstanding member of last year’s CIAA Championship team for the ECSU Vikings. Celeste Trahan, a senior All-American center for the Lady Vikings, has been named the female CIAA Player of the Year. Hilliard and Trahan will become the third Player of the Year duo in CIAA history to bring the awards to one university in the same year. The feat is a first for ECSU. (previous years: 1995 Norfolk State University and 2005 Bowie State University.) The 2008 All-CIAA Team will be recognized at the men’s tip-off banquet on February 26 in Charlotte, NC, the site of the 2008 CIAA basketball tournament. For more information on ECSU athletics, visit www.ecsuvikings.com. Kesha Williams in University Relations &amp Marketing contributed to this article.