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

Brady Moore of Breese Central High School is the winner of the third Belleville News-Democrat Player of the Week high school basketball poll, as selected by readers of bnd.com.

In recent high school basketball games, Moore, a senior forward, scored 23 points against Alton Marquette, 11 points against Civic Memorial, 25 points against Columbia and 19 points against Freeburg. Entering the holiday break, Moore was averaging 16.5 points per game.

Moore — who is committed to Rend Lake College — tallied 593 votes votes (61%) to finish ahead of Karsen Jany of Columbia High School, who secured 252 votes (26%).

Other nominees from the BND’s area included Gannon Birkner of New Athens High School, Avery Bohnenstiehl of Triad High School, Kendall Chigas of Triad High School, Lane Otten of Freeburg High School, Jordan Pickett of Belleville East High School and Jazzmann Westley-Young of East St. Louis 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 an upcoming poll by emailing gvartanian@bnd.com. The Week 4 poll — which centers around choosing your favorite holiday tournament — will appear on the BND’s website — www.bnd.com — at 5 a.m. Tuesday.

Past winners: Tyler Lunning of O’Fallon High School (Week 1) and Dylan Murphy of Columbia High School (Week 2).

This story was originally published December 25, 2021 at 7:00 AM.