Kilgore basketball earns NJCAA academic honors, 15 All-Americans named

Kilgore College put 15 student-athletes on NJCAA Academic All-American honors, and the basketball programs were central to the list with Kendall Mitchell, Kaiden Myers, Josh Olutayo, Chidi Umeh, Rhianna Battles and Rhylei Hendrick all recognized. The June 27 release came with a clear academic bar: the NJCAA’s Academic All-American honors require a cumulative GPA of at least 3.60, with first team at 4.00, second team from 3.80 to 3.99 and third team from 3.60 to 3.79.

The basketball numbers ran deeper than the All-American list. Kilgore said six men’s basketball players and five women’s basketball players earned spots on the Region XIV All-Academic Team, while the men’s team posted a 3.49 GPA and the women’s team finished at 3.26. Both teams cleared the NJCAA’s 3.0 mark for Academic Team status, a basic threshold that still requires a roster to hold together in a league where eligibility and transfer windows can pull at the seams.

That scale matters in Region 14, Division I, where Kilgore competes against junior-college programs across Texas and the surrounding area. The NJCAA said 12,245 student-athletes nationwide earned academic honors for 2023-24, which puts Kilgore’s showing into sharper relief: the Rangers were not simply above average in one program or one class, they stacked academic results across both basketball rosters. Kilgore College, which has served East Texas since 1935, used the release to show that its basketball identity extends well beyond game nights.

The latest numbers also fit a pattern. Kilgore’s 2024-25 academic release already included basketball honorees such as Joshua Olutayo, Chidi Umeh, Kaiden Myers, Rhylei Hendrick and Rhianna Battles among 30 Region 14 All-Academic selections. Back-to-back lists with familiar names suggest continuity in roster management, classroom accountability and retention, the kinds of details that matter to NJCAA coaches building a roster, to parents weighing a stop in junior college, and to recruiters looking for players who can stay eligible while they produce on the floor.