Jimmy Allen selected to Delaware Sports Hall of Fame
Jimmy Allen of Lewes is a member of the 2018 Delaware Sports Museum and Hall of Fame induction class. Nine athletes are scheduled to be inducted.
Allen was the point guard on Cape’s 1975 undefeated boys’ basketball team that won a state championship; many pundits consider it Delaware’s all-time best high school team.
The banquet is set for Tuesday, May 22, at the Chase Center in Wilmington. Tickets are $65 each and can be purchased online at the DSMHOF website www.desports.org/events.
Allen scored 1,785 points in four years at the University of New Haven (Conn.), where he was a second-team NCAA Division II All-American in 1979. He followed with a long career as a professional player and college coach.
Allen’s biography as published on the DSMHOF website reads:
At Cape Henlopen High School, he was a 6-foot-3 point guard on the 1975 team, with John Bishop, Purnell Ayers, Ronson Burton and Carlton Allen, that went 25-0 and is widely regarded as the best Delaware high school team of the decade. He was twice named second-team all-state.
At New Haven, he led the Chargers in scoring for four consecutive years, graduating as the second-leading scorer in school history, while leading the team in assists. He earned second-team all-American honors and also competed for the UNH track & field team, setting school records in the long jump, high jump and triple jump. He served as assistant basketball coach at New Haven in 1988-2004.
Selected by the Boston Celtics in the fifth round of the 1979 NBA Draft, he played four years for their minor league affiliates, averaging 30 points per game one season for the Pittsfield (Mass.) Shamrocks.
At Cape, he also high jumped 6-foot-6 to win the Division II state championship. He also played first base and batted clean-up for Cape’s state tournament baseball team.
He was previously inducted into the University of New Haven Athletics Hall of Fame (1987), Delaware Afro-American Sports Hall of Fame (2007), and Delaware Basketball Hall of Fame (2014).
