MVC/OVC Weekly Honors – Week Eleven

Some Players are Repeating

(St. Louis, MO) – We are finally starting to see some repeat names on our MVC/OVC weekly honors. The first repeat winner of the Ohio Valley Conference’s top honor occurs this week and the Missouri Valley Conference has just its second two-time honoree.

With the Valley hitting the halfway point of the conference season and the OVC reaching that point on Thursday, these two conference races and player of the year competitions are heating up!

Missouri Valley Conference

Belmont’s Ben Sheppard made the game-winning, driving basket to secure the Bruins’ narrow victory at Belmont and recorded a pair of 23-point contests. The 6’6 senior also grabbed six rebounds in each game. Belmont (15-6, 8-2) is tied for the Valley’s top spot and has won six straight games. This week’s ‘Player of the Week‘ joins Drake’s Tucker DeVries as the Valley’s only two-time winners.

Valparaiso has won three straight games and grad transfer Quinton Green scored a career high, 26 points Saturday. Green knocked down six, three-pointers in the victory. Earlier in the week, this week’s ‘Newcomer of the Week‘ scored nine points and grabbed a team-high seven rebounds.

Ohio Valley Conference

Southern Indiana’s Jacob Polakovich is the first OVC player to grab a ‘Player of the Week‘ award two times. The 6’9 forward grabbed 23 rebounds during USI’s win at Southern Illinois Edwardsville and added twelve more against Lindenwood. Polakovich’s 23 boards represented his third game with at least 20 caroms. He is the only Division 1 player with more than one such performance. Polakovich is sharing this week’s award with Jr. Clay.

Clay topped the 2,000 point career mark when picked up 33 points against Little Rock. The former Tennessee Tech guard also scored 18 points against Eastern Illinois. The ‘Co-Player of the Week’ is the OVC’s top scorer (18.9 ppg) and is second in assists (4.6).

Eastern Illinois’ Kinyon Hodges is starting to stake a claim on the ‘Newcomer of the Year’ award by winning his second straight ‘Newcomer of the Week‘ award. The 6’2 guard had back-to-back 20-point (22 and 25), six-rebound games. Hodges is a junior college transfer from Three Rivers Community College.

Eastern Illinois seems to have taken up residence in the ‘Freshman of the Week‘ category. 6’10 forward Kyle Thomas earns the award this week (his third notification) and teammates Kyle Carlesimo and Cameron Haffner have claimed it previously. Five times in eleven weeks a Panther has claimed this title. Thomas scored 16 points against Tennessee State and seven against UT Martin.

MVC/OVC weekly honors are starting to mount up.

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