Here’s who readers chose as preps basketball player of the week in southwest Illinois

Dylan Murphy of Columbia High School is the winner of the second Belleville News-Democrat Player of the Week high school basketball poll, as selected by readers of bnd.com.

In recent high school basketball games, Murphy, a junior forward, scored 29 points against Red Bud and 12 points against Salem. Entering action this weekend, Murphy was averaging 14.8 points per game.

Lunning tallied 3,588 votes (57%) to finish ahead of Norah Gum of Waterloo High School, who secured 1,252 votes (20%). Belleville West’s Maliah Sparks, meanwhile, received 683 votes (11%).

Other nominees from the BND’s area included Sam Lindhorst of Waterloo High School, Kylie Kisgen of Freeburg High School, Caleb Burton of O’Fallon High School, Macaleab Rich of East St. Louis High School, Shakara McCline of East St. Louis High School and Jacob Patton of Mater Dei High School. The poll ended at 11:59 p.m. Thursday.

To be clear, this poll is not scientific. In fact, we invite you to vote as many times as you want. It’s all for fun, BND readers.

Anyone can nominate a varsity boys or girls high school basketball player for next week’s poll by emailing gvartanian@bnd.com. The Week 3 poll will appear on the BND’s website — www.bnd.com — at 5 a.m. Tuesday.

Past winners: Tyler Lunning of O’Fallon (Week 1).

This story was originally published December 18, 2021 at 9:00 AM.