Center Grove's Gracyn Gilliard wins 2026 Miss Basketball honor

Gracyn Gilliard’s senior season left little room for argument. The 5-11 Center Grove guard capped a 29-0 march to the Class 4A state championship by winning the 2026 Miss Basketball award, emerging as Indiana’s top girls player with 51 votes and a wide edge over the rest of the field.

The voting, conducted online by media members and girls’ varsity coaches through the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association and All-Star game director Mike Broughton, drew 181 total ballots. Gilliard finished ahead of Lawrence Central’s Lola Lampley, who received 34 votes, Norwell’s Vanessa Rosswurm with 24 and Valparaiso’s Lilli Barnes with 10. For Center Grove, the honor was another landmark: Gilliard became the program’s first Miss Basketball winner.

Her case was built on more than reputation. Gilliard averaged 25.6 points, 4.3 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 2.7 steals per game while carrying Center Grove through the Johnson County Tournament, the CG/Carol Tumey Invitational, sectional, regional and semistate rounds on the way to the title. In the championship game against Norwell, she delivered 23 points, nine rebounds and six steals in a three-point win that completed Center Grove’s first unbeaten girls basketball season and made the Trojans the state’s 18th unbeaten girls champion overall.

The accolades piled up because the numbers kept climbing. Gilliard finished her Center Grove career with 1,898 points and 336 steals, both school records. She also set program marks for points in a game with 38, points in a season with 692 and a single-game free-throw performance by going 12-for-12. Those numbers helped separate her from a statewide field full of accomplished seniors and turned her final winter into one of the most decorated individual seasons in program history.

The honor also sends her into the Indiana All-Stars program carrying a familiar burden. Gilliard will wear the No. 1 jersey in the annual series with Kentucky, becoming the second Center Grove player to do so after 2019 Mr. Basketball Trayce Jackson-Davis, her cousin. The Indiana All-Stars tradition dates to 1939, and the girls’ Miss Basketball award was added in 1976, placing Gilliard into a line of players expected to lead immediately at the next level.

That expectation will follow her to Davidson College, where she is set to continue her academic and athletic career. Gilliard already owns the 2025-26 MaxPreps Indiana High School Girls Basketball Player of the Year honor, the 2026 Gatorade Indiana Girls Basketball Player of the Year award and back-to-back Johnson County Player of the Year awards. Her final high school season did more than end with a trophy; it established her as the player others in Indiana were trying to catch.