Player of the Week: Drew Wilken
It’s been a fun season so far for Ankeny Christian Academy’s Drew Wilken.
After scoring a career-high 30 points in a win over Iowa Christian Academy, he followed that with a 29 point night in another Eagles win — good enough to land in our Player of the Week poll.
And after amassing an extraordinary amount of votes, he very impressively went on to win the Player of the Week honor.
“I knew some of our teachers went all around and told everyone about it, and they did a really good job on social media and everything. And also I have cousins and friends in the military, and they sent out stuff to all of their friends,” said Wilken.
“It was really just neat to see how much support not just I, but the team and the community had in our team. I just thought that was really cool.”
That career-high 30 point performance was more impressive because the 6-foot-2 wing was a sterling 12-14 from the floor.
Wilken says his teammates were the reason he was so efficient.
“What really helps is that our team has lots of scorers. Everyone on the court is very capable of scoring double-digits, and defenders always have to come out because everyone can shoot, and so it just opens up the lane a little more,” said Wilken. “That allows me to get more open shots, and that’s why things went so well for me.”
Three nights later the junior standout went for 29 points, and added 6 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals to boot.
Safe to say, he avoided the post big-game letdown.
“I was feeling really confident in that one,” said Wilken. “But I knew that if things weren’t going my way to not get discouraged, and if things weren’t going my way to just keep playing the way I know I can play.”
Through five games this season Wilken has led his Eagles to a 4-1 mark while averaging 25 points per game.
He’ll be in the next installment of 2018 prospect rankings.
“I definitely did a lot over the summer, our whole team played a lot, we played like 50 games together this summer,” said Wilken. “And there’s a lot of kids on this team that can score a lot of points, and so far I’ve been the one that’s been able to score.”
Week 2 Voting Totals
Drew Wilken — 10,525
Grant DeMeulenaere — 5,381
Ben Juhl — 386
Jake Hilmer 150
Ethan Wyant — 150