BATON ROUGE – LSU men’s basketball signee Ben Simmons of Montverde Academy was named Thursday the 2015 Naismith Trophy Boy’s High School Player of the Year. The award is presented by Hilton Worldwide.
Simmons joins former LSU player Randy Livingston as the only two LSU signees to win the honor.
Previous winners of the award include players like Alonzo Mourning (1988), Jason Kidd (1992), Kobe Bryant (1996) LeBron James (2003), Shabazz Muhammad (2012) and Andrew Wiggins (2013).
Simmons, ranked No. 1 in the nation in several recruiting polls of high school seniors, has averaged 28.0 points, 4.0 assists, 11.9 rebounds, 2.6 steals, and 1.5 blocks for the Montverde Academy Eagles (28-1). Originally from Australia, Simmons is the second player from a Florida high school (Austin Rivers, 2011) to win this award.
Simmons, whose Montverde team won the prep national championship last year with teammate and present LSU freshman player Jalyn Patterson, also won the Morgan Wootten Award earlier this week, given annually to the best player on the McDonald’s All-American rosters. He will play in the McDonald’s game, then travel to New York City for the prep nationals as well as an appearance later in the month in the Jordan Brands Classic.