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Jordan McCabe of Kaukauna High School has been named the 2018 recipient of the Mr. Basketball award presented by the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association, sponsored by JustAGame Fieldhouse in Wisconsin Dells.

The small but mighty ball-handling whiz from Kaukauna made a name for himself even before entering high school.

Jordan McCabe’s incredible ability to maneuver a basketball with his hands gained national notoriety when he was just 12 years old.

Living in the Seattle area at the time, McCabe was featured on a sports segment on KOMO News as word of his super-advanced ball-handling ability began to be noticed. To date, that segment has been viewed by more than 2.3 million on YouTube. 

Fast forward several years to McCabe’s high school days playing for coach Mike Schalow at Kaukauna High School and the 6-foot-0 point guard’s unique ball handling, passing and shooting skills continue to draw massive interest from fans of all ages. 

Wherever McCabe plays, the crowds are huge and he most often delivers a memorable play or two while helping his team achieve a victory.

A four-year varsity player for the Ghosts, McCabe led Kaukauna to a state championship as a sophomore and hopes to do the same as a senior. 

He has scored a remarkable 2,390 career points heading into the 2018 WIAA State Tournament to rank sixth on the state’s all-time scoring list. He also has 681 assists, 478 rebounds and 240 steals during his stellar prep career.

McCabe, who signed a letter of intent to play NCAA Division I basketball for coach Bob Huggins at West Virginia last November, earned first-team All-State honors from the Associated Press as a sophomore and junior, and is likely to make it three in a row when that team is announced later this month.

He is a three-time first-team all-league pick in perhaps the state’s toughest conference, the Fox Valley Association. As a senior, he shared the league’s Player of the Year honors with Tyrese Haliburton of Oshkosh North.

“The thing that jumps out immediately to me about Jordan is that he is our best player, but he is also our hardest worker,” Schalow said. “When your best player is your hardest worker, that is a key component in what kind of effort you get from the other players on your team. Jordan’s work ethic sets him apart from others. He is the hardest-working player I have ever coached, both in season and out of season. It’s been four years of being extremely fortunate to have a player of Jordan’s magnitude in our program.” 

A social media star thanks to his ability to dribble the ball in a manner rarely seen at the high school level, McCabe scored a career-high 46 points in a loss to Kimberly as a junior. As a senior, he is averaging 26.6 points, 6.0 rebounds, 7.8 assists and 2.4 steals while shooting 39 percent from the field, 82 percent from the foul line (152 of 186) and 34 percent from three-point range (103 of 303).

Kaukauna took a 23-3 mark into the WIAA State Tournament and the No. 1 seed among the four teams in the Division 2 field. 

Though Marquette and Wisconsin showed some interest in McCabe, he opted to commit to West Virginia prior to the start of his junior season. Schalow, for one, thinks McCabe will be a very good player at college basketball’s highest level. 

“Jordan has done a lot of things to prove people wrong,” Schalow said. “And I go back to his work ethic. He’s extremely confident in his ability because he works so hard on his skill set. He has also proven himself on the AAU circuit at the highest end, and those are the players he is going to go up against at the next level. 

“He also has a coaching staff at West Virginia that believes in him and has watched him from his early days in high school.” 

The Mr. Basketball committee consisted of Eli Crogan (chairman), Bob Buck, Calvin Rayford, Billy Kegler, Jim Scheidler, Paul DeNoble, Dick Diener, Roger Turchany, John Schell, Jerry Stelse, Lee Young, Win Parkinson, Ken Barrett, and Jim Jones.

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