INDIANAPOLIS (USBWA) — Three past U.S. Basketball Writers Association presidents, two columnists who informed readers in football states about the achievements of basketball programs, and writers with a range of audiences from a national reach to a devoted local following make up the U.S. Basketball Writers Association's Joe Mitch Hall of Fame Class of 2026 for coverage of men’s basketball.
Luke DeCock, formerly of The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C.; the late Cecil Hurt of The Tuscaloosa News; Andy Katz of NCAA.com, the Big Ten Network, and Turner Sports; Tom Shatel of the Omaha World-Herald; and the late Jeff Washburn of the Journal and Courier of Lafayette, Ind. will be honored on April 6 in Indianapolis during the NCAA Men’s Final Four.
The Hall of Fame honorees named by the Women’s Board, to be honored at the Women’s Final Four in Phoenix on April 3, will be named in a separate announcement.
"In this, the 70th season of the USBWA’s existence, it’s all too appropriate that a hallmark year is accompanied by a hallmark group of great scribes," said USBWA President Matt Norlander. "Our five-person class is proudly filled with people who have been reliable narrators and must-read reporters who documented some of the biggest stories in men’s college basketball over the past three-plus decades. They uplifted coverage, wrote compelling copy, held power to account and, through their continuously excellent work, displayed what it means to be a basketball journalist — in both previous eras and in the current one."
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Luke DeCock: A reporter and columnist at the News & Observer for 25 years until his departure in December, DeCock has been honored three times as North Carolina sportswriter of the year by the National Sports Media Association, as recently as 2024. His columns and features have been honored by the Associated Press Sports Editors. As a USBWA officer during the period leading to his 2022-23 term as president and afterwards, his vigilance and persistence identified access issues involving programs, conferences and the NCAA tournament.
Cecil Hurt: The longtime Tuscaloosa News columnist and sports editor may have been best known for his Alabama football coverage from Bear Bryant to Nick Saban. But his true passion, according to USBWA board member Nick Kelly, was men’s basketball and his coverage from C.M. Newton to Nate Oats. Hurt, as the paper’s beat writer, covered Alabama from the early 1980s until his death in 2021 — more than 1,000 games — including 19 NCAA tournament appearances, seven Sweet 16 trips and one Elite Eight. Hurt was honored by the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in 2019. He was twice named Alabama Sportswriter of the Year and received more than a dozen awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors.
Andy Katz: After early opportunities at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Albuquerque Journal and the Fresno Bee, Katz was named senior college basketball writer for ESPN.com in 2000, becoming one of the most respected reporters and recognizable names in the industry for the last quarter century. He became USBWA president in 2007-08. His transition to broadcast reporting led to work at ESPN, Big Ten Network and NCAA.com. His sessions with former U.S. President Barack Obama, filling out the bracket for the NCAA men’s tournament, quickly became as much a part of March as Selection Sunday.
Tom Shatel: Years before he was hired as lead sports columnist at the World-Herald in 1991 and became USBWA president in 2006-07, Shatel was a regular at courtside while working for the Kansas City Star, St. Louis Sun and The Dallas Morning News, with coverage that included the early days of Roy Williams’ Kansas Jayhawks. Since his arrival in Omaha, Shatel elevated the coverage of basketball with his columns on the growth of the Nebraska program as a member of the Big Ten and the dramatic rise of Creighton in the Big East. Shatel will complete a rare double when he is honored in Indianapolis. This week he received the Bert McGrane Award, the highest honor from the Football Writers Association of America.
Jeff Washburn: The 1991 Indiana Sportswriter of the Year, “Wash” spent most of his career covering Purdue for the Journal and Courier. He attended the Purdue-UCLA game that opened Mackey Arena in 1967. He covered every Indiana Boys basketball state final from 1976 through 1994, when he started full time on the Purdue beat. When an inaccurate report claiming that Purdue coach Matt Painter was headed to Missouri generated national attention and created pressure on Washburn to write the story, his response was that his source was telling him it wasn’t going to happen. His source was right. Washburn won 71 sports journalism writing awards and received the Silver Medal Award from the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011. He died in 2017 at the age of 63, the day after covering a Purdue-Louisville game at Mackey Arena.
Norlander continued to laud the class individually, saying, "Luke DeCock is a champion for press access. He’s also capable of covering just about any sport with a sharp eye; college basketball was fortunate to have him on the beat for so long in North Carolina. The late Cecil Hurt’s wit was practically unmatched on the page amongst his peers, and though he was the most prominent writer on the Alabama football beat, his love and coverage of college basketball more than qualifies him for inclusion into the USBWA Hall of Fame.
Andy Katz’s inclusion is in many ways overdue. He was the most prominent college basketball writer for a generation, with his written coverage and TV presence on ESPN giving so many young writers — me included — motivation to pursue the profession.
Tom Shatel’s writing in Nebraska has long been preeminent and respected and crucial to sports coverage in that state. Shatel could have made it writing columns anywhere and done so on a national level for a long time. The people in the Cornhusker State are lucky to have him for close to four decades now.
And it is equally an honor to posthumously recognize Jeff Washburn, whose dedicated coverage to Purdue proves you can be an all-time great writer no matter the beat – big, small or otherwise. Few have ever been as dedicated, knowledgeable and well-embedded as Washburn was in West Lafayette. His induction is overdue and it is an honor to finally give him this recognition."
This past spring, the USBWA Hall of Fame was named for Joe Mitch, who served for 36 years as the association's executive director, before retiring in 2019. For many of those years, he was associate commissioner of the Missouri Valley Conference. He was inducted into the conference’s Hall of Fame in 2015 in the Lifetime Achievement category. He was previously honored by the USBWA when he received the organization’s Katha Quinn Award for outstanding service to the media in 2007 and was inducted in the Hall of Fame in 2020.
The U.S. Basketball Writers Association was formed in 1956 at the urging of then-NCAA Executive Director Walter Byers. With some 800 members worldwide, it is one of the most influential organizations in college basketball. It has selected an All-America team since the 1956-57 season. For more information on the USBWA and the Oscar Robertson Trophy, contact executive director Malcolm Moran at 814-574-1485.