Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – The Arcata Tigers celebrate their Dick Niclai tournament win last month.

By Ray Hamill — The Arcata Tigers are the 2023/24 Humboldt Sports Boys Basketball Team of the Year.

And they are so for multiple reasons.

After a somewhat slow start to their campaign, the Tigers came together better than any other H-DNL team over the second half of the season, rallying to earn a share of the Big 5 title and following that with a thoroughly deserved Dick Niclai tournament championship in front of a packed house at Lumberjack Arena in early February.

No local boys team achieved more in 2023/24 than the Tigers, who were playing their best basketball down the stretch of the H-DNL season, and even a loss to McKinleyville in the North Coast Section playoffs can’t take from what they accomplished this past winter.

The Panthers, to their credit, found a way past the Tigers in the postseason and Mack fans might feel hard done by here.

But it was their biggest rivals who rallied for a share of the Big 5 championship during the regular season and emphatically carried that momentum into the H-DNL postseason on their way to winning the Dick Niclai tournament, claiming the biggest annual prize in H-DNL sports.

And that makes them our choice for team of the year.

Head coach Kellen Maynard did a phenomenal job with the team this season, and the Tigers succeeded without arguably their best player — 2022/23 Big 5 co-MVP Luke Moxon — who missed the majority of the season through injury.

There were several players who played key roles for the team and made huge contributions while stepping up in Moxon’s absence, no one more so than Big 5 MVP Luke Lemke, who has quickly established himself as one of the most exciting athletes in the H-DNL right now.

Dawson Vallerga, Kalani Butor and Dayquan Dunn each also played huge roles for the Arcata boys on their path to success, while the quick development of players like Levi Sims and Lucian Rodriguez helped make the Tigers the team to beat at the business end of the H-DNL season and shows how impressive the job Maynard and assistant coaches Patrick Myers and Bryson Meyer did this year.

The Arcata boys were not the most consistent team in the H-DNL this year — an honor that goes to St. Bernard’s — nor did they achieve as much as McKinleyville or South Fork in the playoffs.

But no local team impressed as much late in the H-DNL season nor achieved more in the face of adversity than the Tigers, and that makes them our choice for boys team of the year.

Runners-up — McKinleyville and St. Bernard’s