College Achievers: Day of domination lifts Waubonsie graduate to MAC award
The first Northern Illinois University baseball player to earn the award in nearly four years, junior catcher Logan Gregorio (Waubonsie Valley High School) on March 10 was named Mid-American Conference player of the week.
Gregorio hammered Kent State pitching in a doubleheader split in Ohio. The 6-foot-1, 200-pounder went 8-for-10 with 3 home runs, 2 doubles, 9 RBI and 7 runs scored. A right-handed thrower who bats left-handed, Gregorio hit a homer and drove in 5 runs in the first game and hit two more home runs and drove in four in the nightcap.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything like the day Logan had, where a hitter just completely dominated the other team,” Huskies head coach and Elk Grove High School graduate Ryan Copeland said in the game summary.
Gregorio was Northern’s first MAC baseball player of the week since May 10, 2021. Entering Friday he was batting .382 with 6 home runs and 22 RBI in 14 games. He led the Huskies in nine different offensive categories.
Gregorio transferred to Northern Illinois after two seasons at Benedictine University. He was a 2024 d3baseball.com fourth-team All-American after hitting .365 with 10 home runs and 53 runs batted in, helping Benedictine to its first Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference title.
Double-doubling
McKendree University sophomore forward Baylie Parks (Lake Zurich) earned first-team honors in Great Lakes Valley Conference women’s basketball. Averaging 18.9 points and 10.7 rebounds, Parks led the GLVC in both those categories while also averaging 2.6 assists and 1.9 steals. In a Feb. 20 loss to Quincy, Parks scored 24 points with 17 rebounds for her 11th double-double of the season, the most since McKendree moved to Division II. Also an all-Midwest Region pick, Parks ended the season with three more double-doubles in points and rebounds, for 14 of them in 26 games.
Missouri-St. Louis guard Katie Hamill (Crystal Lake Central) made the GLVC all-freshman team after averaging a team-high 11 points and finishing second on her 19-9 team in 3s, rebounds, and steals.
Three master
Yale senior guard John Poulakidas (Neuqua Valley) is a finalist for the Lou Henson Award, which honors the nation’s top Division I mid-major men’s basketball player. Poulakidas, who drew national attention a year ago for his play during the NCAA Tournament, earned first-team Ivy League honors and led the league in scoring at 19.3 points a game. His 83 three-point baskets so far this season match the 83 he made as a junior. Poulakidas is second in program history with 239 threes over four seasons.
Yale (22-7) led the Ivy League regular season standings at 13-1, then clinched an NCAA tourney trip Sunday by winning the Ivy League Tournament, 90-84 over Cornell. Poulakidas scored 20 second-half points and 25 overall, with 5 threes in the title game. In a 59-57 semifinal win over Princeton and junior forward Caden Pierce (Glenbard West), Poulakidas scored 13 points with 3 threes, one of them the come-from-behind game winner with a minute left.
Big jump
Sean Mullen (Grayslake Central) is someone to watch. A freshman at Michigan State, Mullen finished 11th in heptathlon at the Big Ten Conference men’s indoor track and field championships, but he tied for first in the pole vault section. Mullen soared 4.75 meters, just under the 4.76 meters (15 feet, 7¼ inches) he scaled last spring at Grayslake Central’s own Class 3A sectional on the way to a fifth-place state finish.
A usual suspect here, Wisconsin graduate student Bob Liking (St. Charles East) finished second in the Big Ten Conference men’s 5,000-meter run at 13 minutes, 42.62 seconds. He placed third in the 3,000 at 7:58.55.