BEYOND THE ARC: PERSPECTIVE ON MIKE BIZOUKAS

November 8, 2006


As the early signing period for college basketball approaches, several teams are jockeying for position to fill their recruiting classes. At DePaul, they wasted no time after learning that prized point guard recruit Derrick Rose would be attending Memphis in filling their need for a point guard in this class by getting a verbal commitment from Munster High School’s Mike Bizoukas. Munster head coach Mike Hackett was gracious enough to spend some time allowing us to learn more about his program and the newest Big East recruit.

“Michael Bizoukas is your classic pure point guard. He runs the show, he gets the ball where it needs to be, when it needs to be there. Mike
makes all of his teammates better, by making the game easier for them in the way that he distributes the ball,” Coach Hackett says of Bizoukas.

Last season, Bizoukas and the Mustangs were 20-4 under Coach Hackett’s direction. Munster is in Indiana’s 4A classification with 1600 students and finished ranked #11 in the final Indiana Basketball Coaches Association poll. In his six years at Munster, Coach Hackett has accumulated a 100-36 record, winning 20 or more games in three of the last four years.

Last season with the 6’1, 165 lb Bizoukas at the point, the Mustangs captured the LAC Conference Championship and the LAC Conference Tournament Championship. Bizoukas averaged 9 PPG along with 6 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 1.7 steals a contest. During the year he tied the school record for assists in a game with 13 and set the record for assists in a season with 143. Bizoukas was honored as a 1st team all-conference selection as a sophomore and a junior and voted team captain as a junior and senior.

Even with all the individual honors and team honors bestowed up Bizoukas and the Munster High School basketball team, Coach Hackett could only sum up his point guard in this way: “…the qualities that I admire the most about Mike are his toughness, work ethic, and his never give up attitude that he brings to the game.”

High praise for any point guard! We’d like to thank Coach Hackett for taking time to give us a perspective on Mike Bizoukas and allow fans of DePaul and the Big East to get an idea of a player they will be seeing a lot of in the future. We wish Coach Hackett, Mike and the rest of the Munster High School Mustangs the best of luck this season and hope to check in later as the season gets going on their progress.