Amis wins top honor at awards banquet
Before the season started for the Hawaii basketball team, Bill Amis won a koa bowl trophy at the “King of the Beach” preseason training competition. After the season ended, he won an even bigger and more prestigious koa bowl trophy as the recipient of the Art Woolaway Most Outstanding Player.
In between winning the two trophies, Amis persevered through a roller-coaster ride of a season, and emerged as a leader and go-to player for the Warriors.
Amis received the Most Outstanding Player trophy at the team’s awards banquet on Thursday night, April 21, at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Coral Ballroom.
“I know there’s a lot of history behind this award and it’s a great honor to be able to receive it,” Amis said. “It means a lot, putting in all my time, all my blood, sweat, tears, everything into this program. It’s been a great ride.”
Amis averaged 15.2 points and 7.8 rebounds per game as a senior, and was a second-team All-WAC selection. He missed 10 games early in the season with a foot injury, but proved his value late in the season, when he led the team to the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament.
Junior point guard Miah Ostrowski won the Ah Chew Goo Most Inspirational Player award for his thrilling – and courageous – contributions late in the season. He joined the basketball Warriors one day after finishing the season with the UH football team, and eventually became the starting point guard.
His father passed away during the basketball season, but Miah never skipped a practice and nearly led the Warriors to an upset of nationally-ranked Utah State during the same week of his father’s passing.
Other award winners were:
Academic Award: Hiram Thompson
Best Defensive Player: Trevor Wiseman
Best Free Throw Shooter: Zane Johnson
Best Rebounder: Vander Joaquim
The Warriors finished 19-13 under first-year head coach Gib Arnold.
A capacity crowd of more than 300 attended the banquet. In addition to presenting the awards, Arnold also shared information with the crowd on the team’s recent recruits, and an upcoming trip to Asia.
Two deserving awards. Bill was steady all season and Miah was really an inspiration to this team. Dayton, thanks for the great coverage this past season. Looking forward to next season. It would be awesome if you were able to follow the team to China.
Dayton- thanks for this website, it really was a great source of information and entertainment for all of us Warrior junkies. Your efforts are greatly appreciated and I hope that they will be rewarded.
Thanks for all the great stuff this season Dayton. If the university can’t squeeze you in the budget to follow the team and give Warrior Insider updates, I hope we can pool together some funds or get creative to make it happen for you. It’s gonna be exciting to see the new squad start to gel early and often together and come back ready to shock the NCAA next year. Lovin that UH ball is exciting again….Hurry up and secure Coach Gib here with a solid contract!
Good to see Bill get most outstanding player trophy.He is one of the most improved player UH have had from the first time he got here as a sophomore to his senior.
Dayton good job this season.Your blog is right on.
I also want to thank you Dayton for running this site. I check your site everyday and appreciate the fact someone cares enough to focus on UH basketball alone. Considering how budget cuts seem to affect us all, in the case this site does go down, I hope you will email all your followers so we can organize something to start another site. Hope you continue to keep us up to date during the off-season. Oct. can’t come soon enough.
Wow does Gib know how to entertain 1000x better than mack. Night and day how well he speaks. No wonder he recruits so well
i am thinking that next year we will have a two award winner.
mvp and free throw shooter will be zane johnson, who as the captain will lead this team to a 20+ win season.
i’d like to see joston thomas turn it around and turn it on to garner the most inspirational award. then, i’d know that we’d kicking butt on the courts.
I could see one of the newcomers winning MVP award also.