Even before he broke the Lima Senior scoring record with 59 points then broke it again with 65 points, Xavier Simpson was one of the leading candidates to be Ohio Mr. Basketball, probably the leader of the pack.

All the credentials of a typical Mr. Basketball are there. He has put up big numbers individually and his teams have been successful, too.

He has signed with a high-profile college basketball program, Michigan. And his name has been out there as one of the top players in the state both on All-Ohio teams and on the lists of the top 100, top 300 or top whatever recruits in the country for the last three or four years.

Twenty-two players have won the Mr. Basketball award since it was first given out in 1988.

Six players have won more than once. LeBron James won three times and Lima Senior’s Greg Simpson, Jim Jackson (Toledo Macomber), O.J. Mayo (North College Hill), J.J. Sullinger (Columbus Northland) and Luke Kennard (Franklin) were two-time Mr. Basketballs.

Ohio State has been the most popular college choice for the Mr. Basketball winners, with eight of them signing with the Buckeyes out of high school and two others transferring to OSU during their college careers.

Xavier Simpson would be the second Mr. Basketball to go to Michigan. Trey Burke is the only Mr. Basketball to sign with the Wolverines so far.

Six of the Mr. Basketball winners have played in the NBA – James, Jackson, Mayo, Sullinger, Burke and Jason Collier.

The Mr. Basketball Award is given out by The Associated Press, which uses a two-step process to select the award winner.

At the first level, sportswriters and broadcasters vote for all-district teams in their areas around the state. After those teams are all chosen, the district chairmen get on a teleconference and vote for Mr. Basketball.

I am not a district chairman but I do get to make suggestions to the voting representative from northwest Ohio.

So, do I think Xavier Simpson will win it this year? As I said earlier, he appears to have all the credentials.

He already has played on a state champion team with Lima Central Catholic in 2014 before transferring to Lima Senior when his dad, Quincey Simpson, became the Spartans’ head coach. Lima Senior came within one game of going to the state tournament last year and is undefeated so far this season.

He was Co-Player of The Year in Division I on last year’s All-Ohio team. He is ranked No. 45 nationally in ESPN.com’s Top 100 in the 2016 recruiting class and is averaging 30 points a game.

His top two competitors appear to be Gahanna Lincoln’s Nick Ward, a Michigan State recruit, who is ranked No. 39 on ESPN’s Top 100 and Columbus Northland’s Seth Towns, a Harvard recruit, who is No. 99 on the ESPN list. Towns is scoring 30.8 points a game and Ward averages 20.2.

The only two things I could see working against Simpson would be Lima fatigue among some of the voters or just the unpredictability of how they might evaluate Mr. Basketball candidates.

It’s possible that some people would think that Lima athletes have already won four Mr. Basketball trophies (Greg Simpson 1991, 1992; LCC’s Aaron Hutchins 1994; and Shawnee’s Jamar Butler 2004) and that they would not want to make it five.

And, even though it was a Mr. Football vote not Mr. Basketball, it is still incomprehensible 17 years later how Bam Childress could have beaten Ben Roethlisberger for that trophy in 1999. You just never know until the votes are counted.

A few other items:

• NO SLUMBER PARTIES: Ohio State coach Urban Meyer had a short and predictable answer when asked at his National Signing Day press conference if he would be doing sleepovers or climbing trees or some of the other things Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh did to recruit players.

“No,” he said, and then he laughed.

However, Meyer did say OSU continually studies how it handles recruiting and how the competition does it.

“We know everything that everybody is doing,” Meyer said. “We monitor the best recruiting schools in the country and see what they do. We’re going to look at mailings, graphics, that kind of thing. However, we have to remain true to ourselves and who we are and who I am.”

• MSU RAISES TICKET PRICES: Michigan State announced an increase in the price of its season football tickets on Friday, but Spartans fans are still paying only about 60 percent of what Ohio State fans will spend for a season ticket.

MSU, which had not raised ticket prices since 2009, will charge season ticket holders $343 for seven home games. OSU season ticket holders will pay $614 this season for seven games, with the price of buying the tickets individually even higher.

• REDS NOSTALGIA TOUR: First the Cincinnati Reds announced they will retire Pete Rose’s number this season. Now they’ve brought back 1990 World Champions manager Lou Piniella as a senior advisor, which presumably refers to his knowledge of the game, not his age (72).

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Reach Jim Naveau at 567-242-0414 or on Twitter at @Lima_Naveau.

Reach Jim Naveau at 567-242-0414 or on Twitter at @Lima_Naveau.