Christmas Eve Stars of the Valleys

Familiar Faces on This Week’s List

(St. Louis, MO) – Familiar faces are popping up in the weekly awards lists from the Missouri Valley and Ohio Valley Conferences. The Christmas Eve stars of the Valleys are players we’re used to hearing from. As teams finish their pre-Christmas and non-conference schedules, some players are already staking their claims to season-ending awards.

Missouri Valley Conference

Preseason player of the year A.J. Green is measuring up to those accolades. The Northern Iowa guard topped the 20-point mark twice. His 53 points over those two games earned the UNI star his second ‘Player of the Week‘ award. The offensive outburst pushed Green into tenth place on Northern Iowa’s all-time scoring list.

Jaylen Minnett pulled in many awards at IUPUI and now he is racking up honors at Missouri State. The IUPUI all-time leading three-point shooter has become Valley’s ‘Newcomer of the Week‘ by scoring 30 points during MSU’s two victories. He connected eight times from long distance and now has 320 triples during his collegiate career.

Ohio Valley Conference

Murray State is 10-and-1 and star guard Tevin Brown is shining brightly as one of this week’s stars. Brown sparked the Racers to an 87-76 win over highly rated Chattanooga. The 6’5 guard scored a career-high 33 points against the Mocs while making seven three-pointers. This week’s ‘Player of the Week‘ grabbed nine rebounds and moved into fourth place on the OVC’s all-time three-pointer list with 288.

Brown has now earned the weekly award in back-to-back weeks.

UT Martin has now claimed the ‘newcomer’ award three times in six weeks. Skyhawk guard K.J. Simon picked his second ‘Newcomer of the Week‘ mention by averaging 21.5 points and 3.5 steals during the split of UTM’s two games. Simon’s teammate K.K. Curry was week one’s top newcomer.

Simon is third in the OVC scoring race (17.5 ppg) and second in steals (2.1 per game).

Southeast Missouri freshman Phillip Russell has joined two other players as multiple winners of the league’s top rookie honor. Austin Peay’s Elijah Hutchins-Everett and Southern Illinois Edwardsville’s Ray’Sean Taylor are the other two.

Russell scored 25 points during SEMO’s loss to Pepperdine and is the OVC’s second leading freshman scorer (14.4 ppg) to Taylor. The OVC’s ‘Freshman of the Week‘ is a product of powerhouse Vashon High School in St. Louis.