KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The Illinois State men's basketball team was named a 2024-25 National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Team Academic Excellence Award winner, while five players were named to the 2024-25 NABC Honors Court.
The NABC Team Academic Excellence Awards recognize programs that completed the 2024-25 academic year with a team GPA of 3.0 or higher. The NABC Honors Court, meanwhile, includes junior, senior, and graduate student men's basketball players who finished the 2024-25 year with a cumulative GPA of 3.2 or higher.
The five players to reach the Honors Court include Boden Skunberg, Caden Boser, Dalton Banks, Landon Wolf, and Malachi Poindexter.
Skunberg, who came to ISU as a transfer from North Dakota State, missed the entire season due to injury after averaging 14.1 points while leading the Bison with 168 rebounds and dishing out 66 assists.
Boser closed his college career after spending two seasons at both UMKC and Valdosta State. He closed his career in a big way, helping the Redbirds win the Purple College Basketball Invitational title as he scored a season-high 20 points going a perfect 7-of-7 from the field and 4-of-4 from long range.
Banks averaged a career-high 10.1 points per game during his final season of college basketball, playing in each of the team's 36 games and dished out 144 assists while grabbing 63 steals, the third-most in a season in program history.
Wolf, who came to ISU via Northern Iowa, averaged 6.3 points per game in his first season at ISU, making 36 percent of his long-range tries while pulling down 2.9 rebounds and grabbing 24 steals during the year.
Poindexter closed his college career by averaging 6.8 points per game, making 39 percent of his tries from long range and dishing out 44 assists against just 29 turnovers on the year.
Last season the Redbirds had a remarkable year with a 22-14 overall record, a seven-win improvement from 2023-24, and a postseason tournament championship. The team's end-of-season NET ranking was 121, the highest in program history since the NET rankings were introduced in 2018-19. In 2024-25 the Redbirds finished 24th in the country in three-point field goal percentage, a 324-place jump from the previous season, and the team's effective field goal percentage (.570) and NCAA finish in effective field goal percentage (7th) is the best in school history by a wide margin. The team also set a program record for single-digit turnover games in a season (13) and had the highest KenPom efficiency ranking (112.7) in program history. The incoming Illinois State recruiting class is ranked 66th nationally by 247 sport.
Academics has been an important part of the growth of the program, as the program has set semester grade point averages over five of the last six semesters, setting the program record with a 3.54 team GPA following this fall semester. The Redbirds had three players (Johnny Kinziger, Banks, and Wolf) named to the MVC Scholar-Athlete Team, as Kinziger was named to the MVC Scholar-Athlete First Team, the first ISU player named to the first team in 12 seasons.
