Doyle was dynamic
Published 7:51 pm Saturday, March 14, 2015
In any given game, Mario Doyle was capable of unleashing any number of highlight-reel plays on his opponents.
A long 3-pointer. A thunderous dunk. A key free throw, followed by a defensive stop and a rebound on the other end to seal the game.
Doyle could seemingly do it all, and often did. He was a Mississippi all-star, a team leader and, in his senior season, Warren County’s best player. The Warren Central guard’s superb all-around game made him the 2015 Vicksburg Post boys basketball Player of the Year.
“When you think about an MVP, he fits the bill,” Warren Central coach Bruce Robinson said. “He led us in scoring, rebounded strong and played defense well. As goes Mario, so goes the Vikings.”
Doyle averaged 17.8 points per game this season, and finished his high school career with 1,134 points. Scoring, though, was only one facet of his game. The 6-foot-1 shooting guard was a tenacious inside player who averaged 4.4 rebounds per game, and a cool customer when the game was on the line.
In a double-overtime win over Vicksburg in December, Doyle finished with 31 points and hit shots at the end of regulation and the first overtime to keep the game going. He then hit a free throw in the final seconds of the second overtime for the win.
“I’m not afraid of pressure. I had to work hard every year to become who I want to be, and I haven’t become that yet,” the soft-spoken Doyle said. “To me, I just zone out and don’t feel much pressure. It’s a win-lose situation. I like to be under pressure.”
The various pieces of Doyle’s game have been snapped together over the years like Lego pieces.
He credits his brother, former Warren Central and Holmes Community College standout Marcus Harvey, with teaching him to shoot a 3-pointer when he was in first grade. Defense and rebounding stemmed from seeing an opportunity to improve his scoring.
“I like to crash the boards when I can,” he said. “I know if I can get a rebound when nobody’s expecting it that I can probably go back up with it.”
And then there’s the dunks. Doyle really likes to dunk.
At a recent photo shoot, Doyle was asked if he had any ideas, and suggested a dunk. One became 20 as he tirelessly showed off an array of one- and two-handed slams. There were only a few friends and teammates to witness it, and not a packed crowd, but it still seemed to raise Doyle’s energy level.
“I’m still trying to get up higher and do more dunks,” he said. “It gets the energy up. It makes everybody alive on the court and active and moving around.”
Doyle appears set to have an opportunity to keep adding and adapting to his chameleon-like skills. He’s drawn interest from a number of Mississippi’s junior colleges, but hasn’t yet signed with one.
Robinson said Doyle’s attitude, as much as his athletic skills, will give him a chance to be as big a success at the next level as he was in high school.
“Character-wise, he’s the type of kid you want to coach. He wants to learn and get better,” Robinson said. “That’s a tremendous asset when he gets to college. To be a solid person, a solid student, an all-around good guy is an asset, and that’s what he is. We’re going to truly miss him.”