White Honored As Mr. Basketball
White has averaged 24.9 points, 8.2 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 2.6 steals a game this season for O-G (24-3) heading into the state final four. With 1,995 career points, he is five points away from becoming the first Ottawa-Glandorf player and first Putnam County player to score 2,000 points.
Ottawa-Glandorf has reached the boys state basketball tournament all four years of White’s career. The Titans were state runner-up last season and in 2022 and have a 94-15 record in the last four seasons.
Next season White will wear an Ohio State uniform after signing with the Buckeyes in November. He chose OSU over Butler, Northwestern, Cincinnati and TCU and recently reaffirmed his commitment to the Buckeyes after Jake Diebler was hired to replace Chris Holtmann.
Quizzed about his knowledge of former Mr. Basketball winners not named LeBron James, White responded without hesitation, “Malaki Branham, Gabe Cupps, Devin Royal, Jamar Butler and Greg Simpson.”
He said his feeling at the moment he learned he would be joining the list of Mr. Basketball winners was “kind of a sense of accomplishment.”
“It’s something you heard about growing up,” White said. “You want to win. It’s something you dream about winning and to actually hear I won is really cool. It’s a great feeling. It’s one of the best feelings of the high school experience.”
White is the first Mr. Basketball from northwest Ohio since Lima Senior’s Xavier Simpson in 2016. This is the 14th time an Ohio State recruit has won this award in the 37 years it has been given out.
Improving his shooting in his last two seasons of high school basketball played a big part in getting his Ohio State offer, White said.
His plans this summer start with “just continuing to work on my body.”
“I feel like I have a pretty good frame, but I still need to fill out in certain areas,” he said.
Ottawa-Glandorf coach Tyson McGlaughlin said, “I’ve got chills running down my body just thinking about it.
“A lot of times I feel like we get overlooked here in northwest Ohio, especially in our area. To see one of our own recognized at the highest level, it’s just a feeling I’ve never been a part of it. There are a lot of really good players. To me, he separated himself by performing his best on the highest stages.”
White, who regularly appears on his high school’s honor roll, played four sports (baseball, basketball, football and soccer) until his sophomore year.
His mother, Sandy White, a first-team Division III All-American at Capital University who scored 2,248 points in her college career, thought baseball, not basketball, would become her son’s sport when he was younger.
“I would have never guessed it was going to be basketball,” she said. “From the time he was little, he had a baseball glove on his hand, and he was throwing a baseball over and over and over. Probably around eighth grade, he really developed a love for basketball full speed ahead. He worked on it tirelessly, and here we are.”
Colin White said, “Baseball was my favorite sport. I kind of started getting a little bit taller, a little bit lankier, a little bit faster, and basketball kind of became the sport I was best at. After freshman year, it kind of took over my life, and I was like, ‘Man, I really love this sport.’ I took it and rode it from there, and now basketball is my life. It’s just something I love to do.”