With the spring semester coming to a close, now is the time seniors look back at their experiences at Tulane. The Tulane basketball team said goodbye to three key players, Donnie Stith, Matt Wheaton and David Gomez, at the last home game of the season.
Most seniors look to build upon their résumés in the final days as undergrads. With graduation right around the corner, Gomez received one final award for his performance at Tulane, as he was named first team All-Louisiana by The Louisiana Sports Writers Association.
Gomez receives this award after an impressive senior season to cap off his career at Tulane, where he averaged 14.4 points, 6.2 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game. He is Tulane's No. 12 all-time leading scorer and No. 14 in rebounding. As well as being named first team by LSWA, he was named to the second team for C-USA and to the National Association of Basketball Coaches All-District team.
Those numbers are impressive when considered what the basketball team, Tulane and the rest of New Orleans has had to face in the past four years. Gomez was recruited to come to Tulane to play under then-head coach Shawn Finney.
However, Finney left Tulane after Gomez's first year, and Dave Dickerson became the head coach as Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on New Orleans.
Gomez stayed with the team thoughout all the turmoil and his proudest moment while at Tulane came when the team returned to New Orleans.
"I was proud when we had our first game after Katrina when we finally got back," Gomez said. "We played UNO, and I felt like that was a situation where the city had been going though some things that at this point in time had never been dealt with in the nation's history. And to play and kind of take people's minds off of the negative things that had been going on, I'm really proud of that."
While Gomez's numbers were impressive his senior season, the team as a whole went though a rough patch, dropping eight straight games to conference foes.
2008 Woodie Awards
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