Corona del Sol point guard Alex Barcello, who officially signed with the University of Arizona in February, was named the 2016-17 Gatorade Arizona Player of the Year for boys basketball. He averaged 24.2 points per game in his senior season. It's the second time he's won the award. | Alex Barcello / Twitter |
In 2013-14, when the Corona del Sol Aztecs were winning their third of four consecutive state championships, things may have seemed somewhat easy for point guard Alex Barcello.
He was a freshman. The University of Arizona scholarship, the national recognition, and budding partnership with athletic guard Saben Lee were still down the road, and the Aztecs had risen, once again, to prominence.
The prominence never evaporated. As Barcello’s career blossomed, the Aztecs remained one of the state’s most recognizable teams. Even after losing star big man Marvin Bagley, who transferred after his freshman season in 2014-15, they spent much of the next three years atop Arizona’s boys basketball rankings and were perennially among the nation’s top 50 schools.
It’s not surprising, then, that as a senior, Barcello was named the 2016-17 Gatorade Arizona Boys Basketball Player of the Year. It’s the second time Barcello has been awarded as the state’s top player, earning the honor as a sophomore as well when the Aztecs went 33-1 and knocked off Desert Vista in the state championship.
But it was anything but easy.
This season, the 6-foot-3 point guard averaged 24.2 points, 5.9 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game, leading Corona del Sol (26-4) to the 6A Conference title game in which the Aztecs fell to Basha, 75-65.
Barcello scored 25 points with six boards in the final, capping a final season where he never finished in single-digit scoring and managed 20 points or more in all four postseason games, including a 29-point, 11-rebound effort against Westview in the quarterfinals.
“Alex Barcello is one of the best point guards in the state,” Highland High head coach Derrick Donaldson said. “He takes a calm and cool approach and at the end of the game you don’t even realize he has scored 30 points on your team.”
Still, the disappointment of losing in the finals lingered. He managed just two points in the fourth quarter after a blistering 23-point showing in the first 24 minutes. While Basha seniors Gabe McGlothan and Terrell Brown celebrated, Barcello walked off the court as one of the most decorated players in the state since Corey Hawkins of Estrella Foothills a decade earlier.
Barcello, who has carried a 4.0 GPA throughout high school and is a vocalist in his church choir, went 108-15 in 123 varsity games. He won two state titles, and was 10 points away from a third. And to cap it off his selection as the Gatorade Player of the Year marks just the second time in the last two decades there has been a repeat winner in Arizona (Hawkins was the first).
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