Being named to the All-American team is something junior Nolan Ebel has dreamed of his entire basketball career. Following this 2017-18 season, his dream came true when D3hoops.com named Ebel to the fourth All-American team.
The day the picks were announced, he opened his phone to 20 text messages but went straight to his dad’s text that read “You’re an All-American” with the link.
“I just sat there on the phone quietly because it’s something that not many people thought I could do for a long time and for that to happen, I was pretty emotional,” Ebel said.
When Ebel was a senior in high school, he wrote “All-American” on his basketball shoes but did not tell anyone about it. Ebel still had this goal in mind heading into this season at Augustana. He wore a wristband reading “Prove Them Wrong” and put it in his shoe every game to motivate himself to work harder.
Ebel and the Vikings’ hard work paid off leading them to have a record-breaking season. It was their fourth straight Elite 8 appearance, fourth straight regular season title and third CCIW tournament title in the last four years.
Many had expected the team to return to the Final Four, but they lost in the Elite 8 of the NCAA tournament to Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Ebel scored his career high of 38 points in that game. Because of this emotional end to the season, receiving this honor was even more special for Ebel.
“To go into this year and work as hard as I have for so many years and then not get what we wanted to get done accomplished with the national championship, to be rewarded with something like this is a feeling that I can’t even explain. It’s incredible,” Ebel said.
Ebel was also named to the second region All-Central team and the first All-CCIW team. He is the first Viking to score 500 points and have 100 assists in the same season.