by Rusty Ellis
The TSSAA announced their finalists for the 2023-24 Mr. and Miss Basketball awards, and York’s Reese Beaty, White County’s Celeste Reed and Stone Memorial’s Cade Capps are the Upper Cumberland’s representatives.
It’s the second consecutive year for Beaty to be a finalist in 2A, as she’s helped lead the Dragonettes to a 19-5 overall record and a 7-0 mark in 5-2A play. The Clemson commit is averaging 19.8 points per game, along with 6.6 rebounds and 3.8 assists. Her best game of the season came against White County in the Frank’s Christmas Shootout Championship, where she scored a career-high 41 points to lead York over Sparta.
Speaking of Sparta, Reed’s averaging 16.1 points and 10.4 rebounds per game for the 7-3A-leading Warriorettes, For her career, she’s scored 1,285 points and has been an All-District Team member each year of her career. Reed has accumulated 13 double-doubles on the season, and has been named the BCAT Player of the Week three times.
Finally on the boys side, Stone Memorial junior Cade Capps has been named a finalist after an explosive junior season that’s seen him eclipse the 2,000-point mark, an accomplishment he earned recently against Clarkrange on Tuesday. For the season, Capps is averaging 29.6 points, 8 rebounds and 2 steals per game, while shooting 50% from the field, 36% from three and 94% from the free-throw line. He was named the UCR Player of the Year after his sophomore season, and scored a career-high 51 points earlier this season.
The awards will be presented on Tuesday, March 12 at 5 P.M. at MTSU’s Murphy Center.