Western Kentucky’s Tashia Brown has been named the C-USA Player of the Week for the third time this season as announced by the conference office on Monday afternoon. The honor is Brown’s third of the 2017-18 season and the fourth of her career after also picking up Player of the Week laurels once in 2016-17. Only former Lady Topper Kendall Noble (five career C-USA Player of the Week awards) has earned more nods in the category than Brown since the Lady Toppers joined the conference prior to the 2014-15 campaign.
Brown pushed the Lady Toppers to a pair of critical road victories this past week, defeating North Texas 79-65 on Friday evening before downing Louisiana Tech, 74-64, on Sunday afternoon. Across the two contests, Brown averaged 27 points, three assists and 2.5 rebounds and was a near-perfect 14-of-15 (.933) from the free throw line. For the season, Brown is now averaging 23.1 points per game, the best mark among all C-USA players and the sixth-best total in the entire nation among Division I players.
Against North Texas, Brown did much of her damage from the charity stripe, knocking down 10 of her 11 opportunities against the Mean Green. Of her 28 points, Brown netted 13 in the second half to help the Lady Toppers put away the game, never allowing North Texas any closer than nine points over the final 20 minutes of action.
On Sunday at Louisiana Tech, Brown’s clutch baskets in the fourth quarter helped to fend off a strong Lady Techster comeback attempt inside the Thomas Assembly Center. After Louisiana Tech cut the lead to just three points early in the final frame, Brown knocked down back-to-back jumpers to rebuild a three-possession advantage; with the Lady Techsters’ momentum halted, WKU was able to hang on for its third straight road win.
With her 54 points scored this weekend, Brown passed both Kami Thomas and ShaRae Mansfield on WKU’s all-time scoring list and now ranks seventh with 1,817 points. Should Brown maintain her 23.1 points per game average, she would become only the fourth player in program history to score 2,000 career points prior to the end of the regular season in March.
(Courtesy WKU Athletics)