INDIANAPOLIS (AP)   —
Plymouth standout guard and Ball State recruit Randy Davis was nominated to The Associated Press All-State basketball second team for 2008 Thursday. Davis led the Pilgrims to a Class 3A state championshp in 2007 and can add this newest distinction to a host of other honors, including his recent nomination to the Indiana North All-Star Team, which will play the Indiana South team in an exhibition game Saturday at 4 p.m. at Vincennes University. He was also recently named one of Indiana’s top 15 senior ball players by the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association.

Heading off the AP’s All-State first team is Washington’s Tyler Zeller, who led the state in scoring and like his brother three years ago led the Hatchets to the Class 3A championship with an overtime win over Davis and the Pilgrims. The 7-foot North Carolina recruit, a second-team selection last year, averaged 32.7 points and 10.8 rebounds last season and scored a tourney-record 43 points in Washington’s 3A championship win over Fort Wayne Harding.
His older brother, Luke, led Washington to the 2005 title — with a buzzer beater from half-court after the then-freshman Davis scored a go-ahead bucket  — on his way to becoming Indiana’s Mr. Basketball, and Tyler Zeller is a front-runner for this year’s award to be announced next month by the sponsoring Indianapolis Star.
Unlike last year, when the AP boys first team featured Mr. Basketball and IU recruit Eric Gordon and four Purdue recruits, this year’s top team has only one player heading to an in-state college next season.
Garrett Butcher of Edgewood, a 6-7 Butler recruit, averaged 25.2 points a game and moved up from the AP third team a year ago. Joining Zeller and Butcher on the first team are 6-5 Zack Novak of Chesterton, a Michigan recruit who averaged 28 points a game; 6-2 Julius Mays of 4A runner-up Marion, a North Carolina State recruit who averaged 18.5 points this season; and 6-7 DeShaun Thomas of 2A champion Fort Wayne Luers, a sophomore who has not yet picked a college.
Thomas, a third-team All-State pick as a freshman, averaged 29.5 points a game this season.
Brownsburg teammates Julian Mavunga and Gordon Hayward were named to the AP second team. The 6-foot-8 Mavunga, a Miami (Ohio) recruit, and the 6-9 Hayward, also headed to Butler, averaged almost 19 points a game each and led the Bulldogs to the 4A championship, their first state title.
Also on the second team are Braydon Hobbs of New Albany, the state’s No. 1-ranked team whose only loss was to Brownsburg in the tourney semistate and Kyle Kuric of Evansville Memorial, a Louisville recruit.
Another Butler recruit, Chase Stigall of New Castle, was named to the AP third team, along with Tyler Koch of 2A runner-up Winchester, IU recruit Derek Elston of Tipton, Zavier Sanders of Northwestern and IUPUI recruit Larry Stone of Indianapolis Howe.