Five Greater Cincinnati high school basketball players have been nominated for the prestigious McDonald’s All-American Games.
They were among 722 total nominees from the Class of 2023 announced this week.
The McDonald’s All-American Games Selection Committee – comprised of some of the nation’s most knowledgeable high school analysts, prep scouts, media and basketball coaches – will narrow the list of nominees to the 48 players named to the final rosters.
The top 24 girls and 24 boys will be revealed Tuesday, Jan. 24 on NBA Today between 3-4 p.m. EST on ESPN and announced across ESPN’s various social and digital platforms.
The games are in Houston this year on March 28, with the girls game at 6:30 p.m. and the boys game at 9 p.m. The girls game will air on ESPN2 and the boys on ESPN.
Four local players were named on the girls list: Princeton's Solé Williams, East Central’s Josie Trabel, and Ryle teammates Austin Johnson and Abby Holtman.
Walnut Hills’ Aaron Odum was the only local boys player to be nominated. He was one of six named in Ohio. The 6-foot-5 guard averages 16.5 points for the Eagles.
Only one Kentucky male was nominated, University of Kentucky commit Reed Sheppard from North Laurel, who plays at Covington Catholic Jan. 21.
Trabel was one of nine Indiana girls players nominated. She averages a double-double with 20.8 points and 10.1 rebounds, and is the program’s all-time leading scorer with 1,789 points.
Johnson and Holtman are two of the five girls nominees from Kentucky. They hope to follow the lead of Maddie Scherr, a 2020 Ryle graduate who became Northern Kentucky’s first McDonald’s All-American honoree. Scherr is starting for the University of Kentucky after beginning her career at Oregon.
They are two key starters for Ryle, which is 14-4. Holtman, a University of Cincinnati commit, averages over 16 points per game and is one of state’s top 3-point shooters. Johnson averages 10 points and four rebounds.
Williams is part of a storied program as well, as Princeton hails three McDonald’s All-Americans in girls Dee Davis (2003) and Kelsey Mitchell (2014). Princeton grad Darius Bazley was named a boys All-American in 2019.
Williams, a 5-foot-8 guard, averages 22.6 points per game. She signed with Texas A&M in November, choosing the Aggies over dozens of Division I suitors.
Cincinnati is coming off a record-setting year in 2022, when three local girls players became McDonald’s All-Americans: Mount Notre Dame’s K.K. Bransford, Winton Woods’ Chance Gray and Mason’s Kyla Oldacre.
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