| 2/22/2002 3:00:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article | Some question ORVC all-conference voting; league president calls for change in procedure.
By: David Campbell, Courier Staff Writer
Milan’s Ashley Custer has been named Ohio River Valley Conference girls basketball Player of the Year, but not without a bit of controversy.
In voting by ORVC coaches, Custer finished No. 1 with 63 votes — easily ahead of Jac-Cen-Del’s Amber Forkert who was second with 56.
Southwestern, the ORVC champs with a perfect 12-0 record, did have four players named to the all-conference team, but only one player made the top three, junior Catherine Graham.
It was that voting discrepancy that has caught the attention of fans, coaches and league administrators and has caused the ORVC to rethink its voting procedures.
Graham finished third in the ORVC voting, garnering 55 total votes from the league coaches while teammate Brianna Howard was fourth with 52.
The discrepancy stems from votes cast by Milan head coach Jon Custer, who voted Howard as the 11th-best player in the conference and Graham 12th-best while declining to vote for either Julie Brawner or Autumn Walker.
Those votes stand in stark contrast to the rest of the votes cast by the league coaches. In Graham’s case, four ORVC coaches — Switzerland County’s Wayne Ellegood, Jac-Cen-Del’s Scott Smith, Shawe’s Dwight Inskeep and South Ripley’s Bill Snyder — voted Graham as the second-best player in the league while Rising Sun’s Mark Fette named Graham third-best player.
The lone dissenting vote came from Custer, whose 12th-place vote effectively allowed his daughter to claim MVP honors. Coaches cannot vote for their own players, but how they vote or who they vote for can impact the overall order of finish.
Howard’s votes have also come into question. While Ellegood, Inskeep and Snyder named Howard their Player of the Year and Smith named Howard third, Fette placed Howard ninth-best and Custer put Howard 11th.
Shortly after the voting was made available, other league coaches questioned Custer’s votes and Milan High School and the coach offered to withdraw his votes entirely. But since withdrawing Custer’s votes would not change the outcome of the MVP race and it would have bumped Shawe’s Kate Gray off of the team, ORVC president and Rising Sun principal Keith Majewski declined to withdraw Custer’s votes but ordered that a new voting procedure be found.
In a letter Custer sent to league coaches, athletic directors and principals, the Milan head coach outlined his reasons for the votes he cast.
Custer’s letter, which was obtained by The Madison Courier, said Custer based his selections on six criteria.
First was how valuable the player was to their team, second was how players performed in games against Milan, third was the players’ conduct on the court, fourth was season statistics, fifth was the team’s finish in the conference and sixth was the team’s overall record.
Custer took exception to the two games his team played against the Rebels during the regular season and much of his voting was based on those two games.
In both games, Southwestern scored huge wins including 103-27 on Dec. 16 and 93-33 on Dec. 22. In the latter game, Custer noted that Southwestern players taunted his team and the rough style employed by the Rebels sent three of his players to the hospital.
On Wednesday, Custer clarified his comments in a telephone interview with The Madison Courier.
“They have a lack of respect for their opponents,” said Custer. “That’s the way they want to play, fine, but they can’t expect for everybody to like it ... They have nobody to blame but themselves.”
It was the second game that caused much of the controversy. Custer said three Milan players were injured in the game and the coach was ejected late in the contest. As he was leaving the floor, Custer had words with the Southwestern bench.
On Wednesday, Custer said his comments while leaving the floor were directed toward the officials for not letting him leave the floor, instead of toward the Southwestern bench as witnesses have said.
According to Custer, three Milan players were taken to the hospital after the game. Freshman Sarah Krausher suffered a knee injury battling for a loose ball while fellow freshman Katie Volz suffered a concussion. Ashley Custer, the coach’s daughter, needed eight stitches in her head after being struck with an elbow during play.
The game was marked by physical play throughout, but the Indians committed 24 fouls compared to 18 by Southwestern and three Milan players fouled out of the game. The Indians were in foul trouble early in the contest, due in large part to physical play.
In that game, Southwestern head coach Donna Cheatham stopped employing the Rebels’ full-court press, pressing only after free throws and dead balls.
Custer didn’t see it that way.
“I’ll be honest, we weren’t going to come down there the second time because our kids didn’t want to play them,” Custer said. “I was assured that it was not going to be the same as it was, and it was the exact same situation. They were double-teaming us when we had just four players on the floor. Three of those players were freshmen.”
Despite facing a team with just four players, the only points that were scored by Southwestern in the final minute came on three free throws directly resulting from Custer’s technicals.
Custer said his voting for the all-conference team is not meant to send a message to Cheatham and has nothing to do with his daughter, Ashley, winning MVP. In fact, Custer said he doesn’t even agree with the naming of an MVP and doesn’t name a team MVP at the end of the season.
Cheatham nor any official from Southwestern would comment on the voting or Custer’s remarks. Team officials said they would refrain from comments until the current girls basketball tournament is completed. The Rebels will face North Putnam in the Class 2A Semistate at Southport Saturday.
Inskeep, whose Shawe basketball team finished the season 3-24 and was on the wrong end of two lopsided losses to the Rebels, expressed his concern over the conference voting in a phone call to The Madison Courier last week.
Southwestern rolled to an 86-24 win in Madison on Nov. 23 and a 106-38 win on Jan. 7 in Hanover. After the first game, Inskeep expressed gratitude to Cheatham for “taking it easy” on his team.
“They went easy on us. I really mean that,” Inskeep said at the time. “They could have done anything to us that they wanted.”
“I’ve seen the votes. Every coach has seen the votes and it’s not right,” Inskeep said last week. “I really feel bad for those Southwestern girls. They are the best team in the conference and it’s just not right.”
But it’s not hard to argue with Ashley Custer’s credentials. The 5-foot-8 junior led the league in scoring at 22.7 points per game and was second in rebounding at 9.5, but Custer finished in the top 10 in just one other statistical category — free throw shooting, where she was third at .788. As a team, Milan was 8-13 overall and 4-8 in ORVC play.
Graham, on the other hand, was second in scoring (21.7 ppg), second in assists (76), fourth in field goal percentage (.524), first in free throw percentage (.867) and third in 3-pointers (36).
Howard was third in scoring (21.5 ppg), 10th in rebounding (6.3 rpg), ninth in assists (53), sixth in field goal percentage (.515) and 10th in free throw percentage (.688).
Jon Custer’s claim is that the Southwestern players’ statistics are inflated because of “junk” points. He cited that 17 of Graham’s 28 points were scored in the fourth quarter of the Rebels’ 93-33 win on Dec. 22. But of the top 10 shooters in the league based on percentage, only Graham would be considered a pure jump-shooter.
“To be honest, I wasn’t even going to vote for any of the Southwestern players. But then I decided I was going to vote for two from every team and so I voted for them,” Custer said.
The ORVC is taking steps to change the voting procedure among coaches. One possibility is to throw out both the high and low votes for each player.
If that procedure had been in place this season, the ORVC team would be virtually the same except Shawe’s Kate Gray, who finished tied with South Ripley’s April Toops for 12th, would have been left off the team.
The other change would have been in the MVP. Taking away one of Graham’s second place votes and her 12th place, Graham would have finished with 43 points, one ahead of Ashley Custer. Forkert and Howard would have tied for third with 38 points.
Jon Custer, for one, likes the idea of a system to eliminate one high and one low vote.
“It’s not a bad idea. I could live with that,” Custer said. “I voted (this year) within the contexts that were allowed. There was no criteria, only that we had to rank them 12 through one.
“I wish I had players like that,” Custer added. “I saw Triton Central (the co-No. 1 team in Class 2A) last week and felt that there is no way (Triton) can play with Southwestern. They’re just that good. They’re one of the best teams at any class. But you have to respect your opponents and I just don’t see that coming from Southwestern.”
As it is, the ORVC team will stand with changes promised for next season. Next season will also bring changes in the ORVC schedule. A conference tournament will be in place and teams will have to schedule just one regular season game with each other.
“I hope for my daughter’s sake, that this isn’t a diminished award,” Custer said. “because she’s had a wonderful year. Without her, we wouldn’t have won a game.”
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