Drew Thomas to sign with Mineral Area College; Bobby Hatchett's award; Southeast Missourian basketball teams

Drew Thomas told me over the telephone today that he plans to sign with Mineral Area College. The signing will take place Monday at Scott County Central High School.

Thomas visited Southeast Missouri State about two weeks ago but he was not offered. He thinks the junior college route is the best one for him. He said that although he thinks he has the talent to play at a Division 1 school next year, there are some areas of his game, such as his ball-handling, that he'd still like to improve. He said he picked Mineral Area because it plays a fast-paced style of offense similar to the one at Scott County.

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Scott County junior Bobby Hatchett was awarded the Southwest region boys basketball player of the week on ESPN.com RISE for the week the Braves won the Class 1 state title.

Here is the link: http://sports.espn.go.com/highschool/ris....

I recently spoke with Hatchett about it.

"It was great," Hatchett said. "The kid [Joe Jackson] that got RISE [national] player of the week for the whole thing, he played on my AAU team last year out of Memphis."

Hatchett said he was surprised when he was told the good news.

"I don't get a lot of national attention," the point guard said."It was going around school. They hung it up around school. Everyone was surprised and happy for me. All my teachers they was all on the Internet and telling me, 'Hard work pays off.' Everybody kept saying that -- 'The hard work is paying off, Bobby.'"

I asked Hatchett if he thinks it will help his recruitment. He said it already has helped.

"I think it helped because I've been playing AAU, like I said, and we went to Milwaukee the first week," Hatchett said, "And I talked to a couple of college scouts and they had the paper and everything."

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The 10 players we picked for the all-Southeast Missourian boys basketball team will be featured in Sunday's paper. The 10-member girls basketball team will be in on Monday. We invited all 20 players in for their pictures to be taken and we had them answer questions about their seasons so it should be fun for all of you to check out.