Record Setting Performances

(St. Louis, MO) – Records keep tumbling in the Missouri Valley and Ohio Valley Conferences. This version of the weekly awards from the two leagues demonstrate that to perfection. One team’s all-time scoring record fell, and another team’s freshman, single-game mark was toppled.

Ohio Valley Conference

Austin Peay’s Averyl Ugba has all but wrapped up the ‘Newcomer of the Year‘ award, but now the 6’7 senior Grambling State transfer is making a bid for the ‘Player of the Year‘ as well. This week Ugba recorded a pair of 28 point performances and one double-double on his way to claiming both the ‘Player of the Week‘ and ‘Newcomer of the Week‘ awards.

Ugba sparked the Governors to a pair of road victories which moved them into sole possession of third place. The ‘Newcomer‘ award is Ugba’s seventh and the league wide honor is his third. He is ninth in the OVC scoring race (15.0 ppg) and fourth in rebounding (8.2 rpg).

Mack Smith broke the Eastern Illinois single-game, freshman scoring record with his 31 point performance in the Panthers’ Saturday win over Tennessee State. The Indianapolis native bested Joey Miller’s 28 point performance accomplished in 2012. Smith is the  OVC ‘Freshman of the Week‘ for the second time in the past three weeks.

Missouri Valley Conference

Reed Timmer has become the all-time leading scorer at Drake. The senior guard needed nine points to tie Josh Young for Drake’s top honors heading into Saturday’s game at Bradley. Timmer scored a career-high tying 32 points improving his career totals to 1,812, becoming the first Bulldog to reach the 1,800 mark. Timmer is this week’s ‘Co-Player of the Week‘ and has received the weekly honor for the second time this season.

Also scoring 32 points in a game was this week’s other ‘Co-Player of the Week‘, Evansville’s Ryan Taylor. The league’s leading scorer notched 25 points in a win over Northern Iowa and recorded those 32 points in a narrow loss to Illinois State. The award is Taylor’s first this season. Taylor’s 21.1 points per game leads the Valley and the 6’6 junior is averaging 26.3 during the past four Purple Aces’ games.

Southern Illinois has won five straight games and during last week’s two victories, junior Kavion Pippen averaged 17.5 points per game. The Three Rivers Community College transfer made 79% of his shots, and the 6’10 center collected six steals. Pippin is this week’s ‘Newcomer of the Week‘ and his season averages of 12.3 points per game and 6.4 rebounds per game are good for 16th and seventh place respectively.