(Editor's note: While we're faced with a sports-less world during the coronavirus pandemic, MTN Sports is going to re-publish the original stories from the #MTTop50, which launched in 2016 to profile some of the great boys basketball players in Montana history. Our intention is not to revise history, so we're not going to change the order in which the players were featured. However, some articles will include updates to reflect the latest developments in a player's career. This was the fourth story of the series, originally published on June 16, 2016.)
An individual player can have a big impact on the outcome of a basketball game, and nobody can match the record Brandon The Boy accumulated at Box Elder over the past fours. The Boy has a winning mindset – both on the court and off – which places him on MTN’s list of Montana’s greatest basketball players since 2010.
The Boy joins reigning Gatorade player of the year Brendan Howard, Dane Warp, who is one of the best scorers in Class A history, and current Oregon State Beaver Kendal Manuel.
Brandon The Boy stat sheet
As the starting point guard for the Box Elder Bears, The Boy racked up one of the most impressive resumes in Class C basketball history. The Bears went 94-8 during his career, including two state championships and a 76-3 record over the past three seasons. The Boy, who played in the Montana-Wyoming all-star basketball series last week and is playing in the Native American all-star series this weekend, averaged 22.7 points – on 77 percent shooting – to go along with 4.7 assists and 4.7 steals per game during the state tournament.
(UPDATE: After graduating from Box Elder in 2016, The Boy's college career got off to a rocky start. He's back at Rocky Mountain College now, though, and broke into the Battlin' Bears' starting lineup during the 2018-19 season. This year, as a junior, The Boy averaged 7.3 points in 19.1 minutes per game. He made 49 of 108 3-point attempts.)
… on The Boy:
Box Elder coach Jeremy MacDonald: “The big thing he did this year was he shot the ball. He’s always shot at a very efficient rate. He was a high-percentage 3-point shooter, and he took really high-percentage 2-point shots. We’ve always worked with him to attack more and shoot a little bit more and be aggressive. This year, he started doing that. He turned into a very dangerous scorer, and very efficient scorer. He’s always been a great passer, so that part of his game, that’s always been a strength. Just to see a kid working that hard and working on his game and taking so many shots in the offseason and in practices and after practices, just to see it pay off, it was pretty neat to see.”
