Women’s basketball dominates Big 12 awards

By Steve Lansdale

AUSTIN, Texas — Good things happen to good people. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe it’s “good people make good things happen.”

Either way, the fact that the University of Texas women’s basketball team has roared to a 22-7 overall record and a 15-3 record in games against Big 12 opponents this year points out the obvious: that the UT program has a lot of quality players and coaches.

Clearly the Big 12 league office agrees, as the Longhorns claimed four of the top individual awards [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]Wednesday as they prepare to begin the Phillips 66 Big 12 Women’s Basketball Championship as the No. 2 seed.

Junior guard Brooke McCarty became the first Texas player since the inception of the league to be named Big 12 Player of the Year. Senior guard Brianna Taylor was named Defensive Player of the Year, freshman guard/forward Joyner Holmes is the conference’s Freshman of the Year, and Karen Aston earned her first Big 12 Coach of the Year award.

Holmes, McCarty and junior guard Ariel Atkins were named first-team All-Big 12; McCarty was a unanimous selection. Senior center Kelsey Lang earned Honorable Mention all-conference recognition. Atkins and Taylor also were named to the All-Defensive team, while Holmes was a unanimous selection for the All-Freshman team.

The Longhorns split 12 games against top-25 opponents this season and strung together a 19-game win streak earlier in the season. Under Aston’s direction, the Longhorns have recorded four consecutive seasons with 20 or more victories, and have made three consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament, including an appearance in the NCAA Elite Eight last season.

McCarty leads the Longhorns in scoring with average of 14.1 points per game and in assists with 105. She boasts an assists-to-turnovers ratio of 2.2-to-1 and has hit 43.3 percent of her shots from beyond the three-point arc.

Taylor is the first Longhorn to earn the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year award outright; former UT center Imani Boyette shared the award last season. Taylor has helped the Longhorns limit opponents to a combined field-goal percentage of 36.3 percent and just 61.5 points per game. Her 48 steals this season rank second among Texas players.

Holmes is the fourth player in UT history to win the Big 12 Freshman of the Year award, joining Heather Schreiber (2002), Tiffany Jackson (2004) and Imani Boyette (2013). She is a six-time winner of the league’s Freshman of the Week designation, and also was named the espnW National Player of the Week and USBWA National Freshman of the Week Feb. 13. She leads all Big 12 freshmen in scoring (12.3 points per game), rebounding (8.3 rebounds per game) and double-doubles (8). She is fourth in the Big 12 in rebounding, 19th in scoring and fifth in double-doubles. She is the first freshman from any school to earn first-team All-Big 12 honors since 2014.

Atkins earned her first career All-Big 12 First-Team honors this season after receiving a second-team nod last year. She ranks 15th in the conference in scoring with an average of 13.2 points per game, and is second in the league in steals at 2.1 per game and fifth in free-throw percentage at 80.6 percent.

Lang has started 27 of 29 games this season for the Longhorns and leads the team in blocks with 62 — the second-highest total in the Big 12. Lang is ninth in the league in rebounding with 7.9 boards per game and also ninth in field-goal percentage at 53 percent, and earlier this season became the 41st player in program history to score at least 1,000 points.
[/s2If] [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)] [article-offer] [/s2If]