Who's Next? Aaron Simmons is ready to step out of a title team's shadow
Who's Next? is presented by Questishere.
Aaron Simmons knows what a championship run feels like from the inside. Now he wants to be the reason one happens.
Last February, the Acadia Axemen walked into the AUS championship as the No. 3 seed and walked out with the program's 18th banner, the first since 2012.
They beat Memorial 90-65 in the quarterfinal, knocked off UNB 78-69 in the semis, then outlasted UPEI 84-74 in the final. Simmons was in the middle of it, a first-year U SPORTS guard doing the dirty work. In the quarterfinal win over Memorial, he pulled down a season-high eight rebounds, three of them offensive.
His season line was modest: 111 points in 23 games, 55 rebounds, 21 assists and 18 steals, shooting 40-for-79 from the field and 23-for-31 at the line. Season highs of 16 points at UPEI on January 17 and four assists against Dalhousie hint at a lot more under the surface.
Because before Acadia, Simmons was the guy.
At Holland College in the ACAA, he averaged 15.9 points as a rookie, then 19.1 on 49.6 percent shooting and 38.3 from three. He made the ACAA Second All-Conference Team, picked up a CCAA Player of the Week selection, and was named Holland's Defensive Player of the Year. He once dropped 33 on Crandall, hitting six threes. Coaches around the Maritimes knew his name.
Jonathan Bethel, the owner of Questishere, knows it too.
"Aaron is a true do-it-all guard on both ends of the floor. A lefty with an offensive game as smooth and creative as James Harden, combined with the defensive tenacity to lock down your best player like Patrick Beverley. Three-level scoring. Playmaking. Lockdown defense. Aaron is a name the AUS needs to have on its radar."
The early returns this fall back him up. At the Shoveller Tournament, Simmons led Acadia in the 62-57 comeback win over Bishop's, with 15 points and three steals. Acadia trailed by as many as 11 in the first quarter, and Simmons scored the team's last five points of the second, capped by a steal and a layup that gave the Axemen a 32-31 halftime lead. He put up 16, 12 and 15 points across the weekend, and the steals kept coming.
That's the pattern: a scorer who wins possessions on the other end, who thrives when a game gets tight. Head coach Michael Leslie said when Simmons committed that he brings the right combination of skill, maturity and competitiveness.
Last year he learned the league while a title team did the heavy lifting. This year he has the experience, the confidence and the opening. For a guard who has already shown he can carry a lineup, one championship season under his belt might be the best preparation there is.
Watch No. 3.
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