Two of Cabrini’s leading basketball players were awarded Atlantic East Conference honors for the 2019-2020 season. Team captain Keith Blassingale, a senior guard, was named to the first-team all-conference, and Voshon Mack, a sophomore guard/forward, was named to the second-team all-conference.
Head coach Tim McDonald praised the abilities of both players and noted that they bring different strengths to the team.
“Keith is a really talented offensive player. He has a natural inclination for scoring the basketball kind of at all levels–from three is probably his [best],” McDonald said. “Voshon is super athletic, which allows him to kind of play inside and out. The big thing that he has really helped our team with has been rebounding, . . . and that helps us tremendously on the defensive end. The couple games that he missed with injury this year, you can see it in our team, we kind of got beat up a little bit on the glass.”
Blassingale, a business management and marketing major, was the team’s top scorer this year: he scored at least 20 points 12 times this season. He made 73 three-point shots, and had 109 assists and 44 steals in his 26 games this year. He will finish his career at Cabrini with 1,090 total points. His best game this season was against Immaculata on Feb. 22, when he scored 43 points–including the buzzer-beater that won the game–to give the team home-court advantage in the conference playoffs. But if you ask him what stat he is most proud of this year, he will tell you it is his average of four assists per game.
“I know I can score,” Blassingale said. “But people didn’t really think I could pass the ball or have assists. Four assists, and my ability to play point guard at times this year really helped me elevate my game to the point where I believe I can play overseas professionally somewhere.”
Blassingale has been a leader and example to his teammate Voshon Mack, whose second-team honors follow last year’s selection as AEC Rookie of the Year. Mack says both Coach Mac and Blassingale “preached positivity.”
“We had a lot of ups and downs this season, so just positivity was big this year,” Mack said.
Mack, a business management major, missed several games due to injury, but still managed to have a big impact for the Cavaliers. Playing in 20 games, Mack was the second-highest scorer on the team and averaged 9.1 rebounds per game. His best performance this season was against Marywood on Feb. 12, when he made 8 rebounds and scored 25 points.
“It was one of those games where he just got the ball,” Coach McDonald said. “They weren’t able to stop him, and he was just able to take over and make free throws at the end of the game, as well, to close that game out for us.”
As Blassingale graduates in fall 2020 and looks to continue his basketball career overseas, he will leave an important leadership vacancy on the team. McDonald admits he will miss Blassingale’s big personality and leadership by example on the court, but he has high hopes for Mack to step into that role.
“I think [Voshon] definitely has it in him to be an all-conference player with the potential of being the player of the year in the conference,” McDonald said. “My expectations for him are that he continues to grow individually as a player but take the next steps as a leader for our program.”
Mack already has a leader’s attitude, learned from his team captain Blassingale, and evident in his reply when asked if he would like a do-over on any of this season’s games.
“I wouldn’t say I want any do-overs, because you learn from every experience,” Mack said.
