By Kristi Maxwell
Former CEU basketball players Harold Arceneaux and Eddie Gill, along with three other former athletes and two longtime supporters, make up the 2014 class of inductees to the Weber State University Athletic Hall of Fame.
The inductees will be honored at the Wildcat Club Hall of Fame Banquet on Friday at the Hilton Garden Inn in Ogden. They will also be honored at Weber State’s men’s basketball home game against Northern Arizona on March 1.
Arceneaux enrolled at the College of Eastern Utah in 1996 as a freshman. He led CEU to a 28-5 record and the Scenic West Conference regular season championship. He averaged 17.3 points and 5.3 rebounds per game, shooting 57.3 percent on field goals and 40.9 percent on three-pointers.
Arceneaux played two years of basketball at Weber State and is one of the top players in the program’s history. He went to WSU for the 1998-99 season along with Gill and instantly made a name for himself. Arceneaux earned Big Sky MVP honors and All-District honors that season and set a WSU single-season record for points in a season with 713 (later broken by Damian Lillard.) He led the Wildcats to the Big Sky title and a trip to the NCAA Tournament, where they met third seeded North Carolina. Arceneaux had 36 points and knocked down five three-pointers in the upset win over the Tar Heels and he and the Wildcats became one of the darlings of the NCAA Tournament.
Since leaving Weber State, Arceneaux has played basketball professionally on every continent in the world and at nearly every level. From summer leagues in the NBA to minor professional leagues in the United States and to countries near and far, Arceneaux has continued his show all over the world. He has played for professional teams in Australia, France, Portugal, Argentina, South Korea, Philippines, Brazil and Mexico, where he spent the 2012-13 season as a player coach for the Lechugueros De Leon in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico.
Gill enrolled at the College of Eastern Utah after high school and played on the basketball team, averaging 6.1 points and 2.4 assists. In 1997, Gill transferred to Salt Lake Community College and again played basketball. At SLCC, Gill had 16.4 points, 4.2 rebounds and 6.4 assists per game.[1]
Gill teamed with Arceneaux to form a combination that became known as the Thrill and the Show. Eddie “The Thrill” Gill played two seasons at Weber State from 1998-2000. He was part of the memorable 1999 Wildcat team that won the Big Sky Championships and knocked off North Carolina in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
After playing at the CEU and SLCC, where Gill earned Junior College All-American honors, he immediately made an impact as a junior at Weber State. He averaged 14 points, 4.6 assists and 2.7 steals per game in his first season, earned First Team All-Big Sky honors and was named the Big Sky Newcomer of the Year. He was also named the MVP of the Big Sky Tournament by averaging 18.5 points, 7.5 assists and 3.5 steals per game in the two tournament wins to clinch a berth in the NCAA Tournament.
Following his days at Weber State, Gill went on to have a long professional basketball career, spending seven seasons playing in the NBA. He appeared in 187 career games, the second most of any player from Weber State, and spent time with New Jersey, Memphis, Portland, Indiana, Seattle, Toronto and Milwaukee. He started in nine NBA games and while playing with the Nets, Gill scored the eight millionth point in NBA history in April, 2001. He also played professionally in the NBA Development League, the International Basketball League, the United States Basketball League and in Greece and Italy.