Fitzgerald gets first offer

The next St. Thomas Academy Cadet to accept a basketball scholarship will be wing Mike Fitzgerald. At 6-foot-5, 175 pounds Fitzgerald is one of the best shooters in the state of Minnesota and he recently added his first division one offer. Mike has a long list of division one schools showing interest and more offers could be on the way.

This winter the Cadets of St. Thomas once again played in the state championship game. They would lose to Benilde-St. Margaret's but just getting to the title game was another major accomplishment for the Cadet program. One of the biggest reasons St. Thomas made a state run was the maturation of Fitzgerald's game.

Mike is well known to be a great outside threat but it's a pretty fair assessment to say that Fitzgerald was viewed as very one-dimensional coming into his junior season. But as January turned to February a new Mike Fitzgerald started to show his increased ability. Mike was putting the ball on the floor more going baseline to score at the rack. He was running the floor and finishing on the break. And Fitzgerald began to put the ball on the deck more as opposed to always relying on his set jumper.

Of course Fitzgerald's bread and butter is his outside shot. This is why he has division one interest, a division one offer, and he's a regular in the Howard Pulley Panthers line-up.

This past year at St. Thomas Mike averaged 14.3 points per game scoring in double figures in 23 of the 31 Cadet contests. He put up a season high 36 points against Mahtomedi and another 29 in a conference game against Simley.

With scoring totals like this and one of the best long-range strokes in state in a long 6-foot-5 frame, Fitzgerald will be a division one player. "Mike visited Wisconsin-Green Bay this past week and he was offered a scholarship by the school," said St. Thomas assistant coach Tony Yazbeck who is also the Howard Pulley Panthers Director of Administration. "Mike really like the visit, enjoyed being at the school, and they have a nice staff at UWGB.

"Mike also went to camp this month at Northwestern and they have interest in him. Other schools showing levels of interest are DePaul, Santa Clara, Loyola-Chicago, and Northeastern."