Geno Crandall wins Molten BBL Player of the Year award

After leading Leicester Riders to a fifth BBL Championship title, Geno Crandall has been recognised with the Molten BBL Player of the Year award for 2020-21, pacing a poll of BBL head coaches.

It is the first time in seven seasons that a Leicester player has received the award, following Drew Sullivan in 2012-13 as the only two Riders to have ever won it in 33 BBL seasons.

With coaches nominating their top three players, and points awarded for each position, Crandall won the vote by 10 clear points ahead of DeAndre Liggins of London Lions in second place, as he was voted in first by seven of the ten BBL head coaches and in one of the top three spots by all of them.

It continues an amazing run for point guards as the fifth season in a row that a floor general has lifted this award, with Justin Robinson and Rahmon Fletcher each doing so on two occasions.

The 24-year-old Minneapolis-native joined Leicester in the summer after a season in the Czech Republic, and was previously a two-time All-Big Sky second team selection at the University of North Dakota before graduating from the powerhouse Gonzaga University.

He made an instant impact, scoring 20 points in an early BBL Cup win over Newcastle Eagles, including nine in six fourth quarter minutes as Riders came from behind.

Crandall finished the season ninth in the BBL in scoring with 15.9 points per game, second in the league in assists (7.8), and fourth in steals (1.9), leading the league champions in all three categories. The crafty guard also drew the second most fouls of any player in the BBL as he proved difficult to contain going to the rim - including numerous highlight dunks over the course of the campaign - and he shot 80 per cent from the free-free throw line on more than five attempts per game, second overall as one of only two players with more than 100 free-throw makes on the season.

He had nine double-doubles in BBL Championship play, third among all players, and was close to a triple-double on numerous occasions. He saved some of his best all-round performances for the biggest games, including 18 points, 17 rebounds and eight assists in a road victory at the third-placed Plymouth Raiders, and 12 points, 12 assists and eight rebounds in a crucial March win over title rivals London Lions.

His season high for both points (29) and assists (15) came in a decisive contribution in a 116-109 overtime victory over Manchester Giants at the Morningside Arena, as he scored seven points in the extra five minutes. Another home highlight just prior to that saw him hit a buzzer-beater to see off Sheffield Sharks by 75-73.

This final week of the season has already seen him elected to Molten BBL Team of the Year, and just miss out on a place in the Molten BBL Defensive Team of the Year by one vote. He also picked up a Molten BBL Player of the Month award in January, and made the weekly All-Star Five six times

Paternostro Wins Sixth Coach of the Year Award

The Riders' Rob Paternostro was meanwhile named the 2020-21 Ed Percival Molten BBL Coach of the Year, voted by his peers, after leading his team to a 24-6 BBL Championship record in one of the most competitive seasons in BBL history.

This is the sixth time that he has won the award - and fourth in the last five years - which itself leads to another remarkable accolade as he moves clear of Kevin Cadle and Fabulous Flournoy, who have five each, as the coach with the most annual awards in BBL history. Paternostro received seven votes from fellow BBL Head Coaches, quite some way clear of Paul James of Plymouth Raiders in second place.

This was a fifth BBL Championship title in Leicester's history, all of which have come under his stewardship having taken over the role in 2008 before the first league title came in 2012-13. He won his first Coach of the Year award after transforming Riders in that initial 2008-09 season, immediately taking them from 10th to third, and they have only finished below that on three occasions in more than a decade since. Overall, it's the 14th piece of silverware in his reign.

The 48-year-old Connecticut native - who enjoyed a good playing career in the BBL as a charismatic point guard from 2000 to 2008 - has built his success on a defensive philosophy, and will have been pleased to see his team once more end the season as the BBL's meanest defence, for the fifth completed season in a row, conceding just 76.8 points per game. They held opponents to only 42 per cent shooting from the field, led the league in defensive rebounds and blocked shots, allowed the fewest fast break points, and third fewest points in the paint; and they achieved all of that playing smart defence, giving up the third fewest fouls in the league.

At the other end of the floor, the efficiency of his offence was demonstrated by Leicester leading the BBL in field goal percentage (48.2 per cent) as they finished second in points scored per game (87), and they got motoring in the second half of the season, scoring in excess of 90 points on 12 occasions from the end of January onwards.

Riders demonstrated great consistency throughout the campaign, much of which was built on the returns of key players to the roster he assembled, with the likes of Jamell Anderson, Corey Johnson, Darien Nelson-Henry, Mo Walker and Conner Washington all back, alongside whom he added exciting talent such as Crandall and William Lee. All but Johnson and Walker - who missed much of the season through injury - made either the Molten Team of the Year, All-British Team, or Defensive Team.

In a key stretch of games, Riders bounced back from defeat to title rivals Lions by putting on consecutive road wins at third-placed Plymouth Raiders in early January, which sparked a run of 11 straight wins and established Riders at the top of the table. After a pair of defeats, they bounced back emphatically once more with two wins in the space of three days over fellow top four rivals Newcastle Eagles and, crucially, London Lions in mid-March.

Despite that, the title race would go right down to Leicester's final game, and reverting to type they held both of their last two opponents to score totals in the sixties to lift the title on the road at Cheshire Phoenix. Those two defensive stands saw them overtake Plymouth Raiders as the league's leading defence, at a decimal point, to maintain their good run in that regard

The BBL and WBBL play-off finals will take place at Leicester's Morningside Arena on Sunday, May 16, live on Sky Sports.