A young American became the toast of Canada’s collegiate basketball championship this weekend.

Inderbir Gill, the silky smooth guard from Spokane, Wash., was named the MVP of the 2010 Canadian Colleges Athletic Association men’s basketball national championship tournament on Saturday night, moments after his University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) Northern Timberwolves won the school’s first CCAA hardcourt crown with a 96-63 pounding of the host SAIT Trojans at Calgary’s SAIT Polytechnic.

“It’s a funny story. I played for Everett (Wash.) Community College for two years, and in my second year, I was like: ‘Man, I wish I had one more year here,’ ” said Gill, in reference to Canada’s five years of post-secondary sports eligibility, compared to four in the United States.

“And my coach said, ‘You know, you can go to Canada and play three years instead of two.’ I just wanted that extra year.”

Gill, who’d been named a first-team all-star during the 2008-09 CCAA nationals in Prince George, averaged 19.19 points a game during his ’09-10 sophomore season at UNBC.

Gill knocked down 32 points in UNBC’s national gold-medal win against SAIT on Saturday night, after notching 17 in the Timberwolves’ 76-71 first-round win Thursday over the Fanshawe College Falcons of London, Ont., and 12 more in an 80-58 victory over Halifax’s Mount Saint Vincent University Mystics in a national semifinal on Friday.

Meanwhile, a pair of SAIT Trojans – Emmanuel Chiek (5th-year post, Guelph, Ont.) and Keenan Milburn (3rd-year guard, Royston, B.C.) were named to the 2009-10 CCAA national tournament’s first all-star team. Joining them were Will Bradbury (1st-year guard, Kitchener, Ont.) of the Falcons, J.R. Bailey (5th-year post, Toronto) of the Etobicoke, Ont.-based Humber College Hawks, and Gill’s UNBC teammate Jose Araujo (3rd-year guard, Toronto).

Earning a nod on the CCAA tournament’s second all-star team were Quinlan Viera (1st-year guard, Toronto) of Humber, Francis Rowe (2nd-year guard, Victoria, B.C.) of UNBC, Gerard Mozwa (1st-year guard, Toronto) of Edmonton’s Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) Ooks, Pat Wright (4th-year post, Port Edward, Ont.) of Fanshawe and Adam Chmielewski (3rd-year guard, Montreal) of the St-Lambert, Que.-based Champlain College Cavaliers.

The fair-play award went to Simon Bibeau (2nd-year guard, St-Bruno, Que.) of the Cavaliers.