Moon Township, Pa. – Senior forward
Kahliel Spear of the RMU men's basketball team added another honor to his impressive 2021-22 season Thursday, as he was selected the 2022 Horizon League Winter Scholar-Athlete of the Season.
The Horizon League recognizes student-athletes at the conclusion of each of its three athletic campaigns as the Scholar-Athlete of the Season. To be eligible for consideration, a student-athlete must be a member of their
respective sport Horizon League All-Academic Team and the honor is selected by the faculty athletic representatives based on a combination of athletic and academic achievement.
Spear is the male co-winner of the award along with Oakland's Connor Goetz, a member of the track & field team for the Golden Grizzlies. The female honor was bestowed to Susan LaGrand of the Oakland swimming program. The trio follow in the footsteps of Milwaukee's Ari Miller (volleyball) and Paolo Gratton (men's soccer), who were named the 2021 Horizon League Fall Scholar-Athletes of the Season.
Thanks to the accolade, Spear is the first RMU student-athlete to be honored with the award since the Colonials joined the Horizon League in the summer of 2020. An economics major, Spear, a native of The Colony, Texas, has maintained a 3.92 cumulative grade point average (GPA).
During the 2021-22 campaign, Spear led the Horizon League in field goal percentage at 55.1 percent (188-for-341). In leading the Colonials in both scoring and rebounding with per game averages of 14.7 and 7.7, respectively, he also posted a team-high 35 blocks. That total is tied for third in the RMU single-season record book with former forward Rob Robinson (2008-10), who notched 35 rejections during the 2008-09 season.
Also among #HLMBB leaders, Spear ranked fourth in the league in rebounding, fifth in blocks (1.09 per game), 10th in scoring and 13th in free-throw percentage (.726). For his efforts,
Spear was named to the 2022 All-Horizon League Third Team in a vote of league head coaches.
Spear concluded the 2021-22 season by scoring in double figures in each of RMU's final 11 games, the longest streak of his career. During that span he produced averages of 17.4 points and 8.5 rebounds while knocking down 59.2 percent (74-for-125) of his shots from the field. Overall during the year Spear led the Colonials in double-figure scoring games (27), 20-point efforts (8) and dunks (51).
RMU's active leader in consecutive games played (50) and starts (37), in two seasons with the Colonials Spear has produced averages of 12.9 points and 6.8 rebounds per contest while shooting 55 percent (258-for-469) from the floor.
In addition to his exploits on the court, Spear was named to the
2021-22 Academic All-America® Second Team as selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) for his work in the classroom. He is the first basketball student-athlete in RMU's NCAA Division I history, in either gender, to earn Academic All-America® status, as well as the ninth male student-athlete in athletic department history.
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