WKU Women’s Basketball: Tashia Brown Named C-USA Player of the Year
Senior forward Tashia Brown has been named the 2018 C-USA Player of the Year as announced by the conference office on Wednesday morning, becoming the seventh player in program history to be named the conference player of the year.
Since joining C-USA prior to the 2014-15 campaign, the Lady Toppers have captured three out of four possible Player of the Year honors: Chastity Gooch earned the honor in 2015 before Kendall Noble followed with another win in 2016. Four other Lady Toppers were named Sun Belt Player of the Year: Lillie Mason (1986), Shala Reese (2003), Tiffany Porter-Talbert (2005) and Crystal Kelly (2008).
With WKU also capturing three other individual awards on Tuesday (Ivy Brown’s Defensive Player of the Year, Dee Givens’ Sixth Player of the Year and Raneem Elgedawy’s Freshman of the Year), the Lady Toppers have collected the largest single-season individual award haul in C-USA history. Both Tashia and Ivy Brown were also selected to the All-C-USA First Team and All-Defensive Team.
A two-time First Team All-C-USA selection, Brown has put together one of the top individual seasons in school history. The Lake Park, Ga., native is averaging 22.9 points per game, the best among all C-USA players and sixth nationally among Division I players in the category. Brown has scored 663 total points during the 2017-18 campaign, already the seventh-most in a single campaign in Lady Topper Basketball history.
Brown has reached double figures in scoring in all 29 games this season while tallying 20 or more points in 21 of those contests and 30 or more in another four. The senior fired her career-best single-game mark of 38 points on Senior Night against Charlotte on Feb. 23, closing her career inside E.A. Diddle Arena with a 53-4 home record over the last four seasons.
In addition to her single-season totals, Brown is also on the verge of joining historic company as just the fourth 2,000-point scorer in Lady Topper Basketball history. Entering the C-USA Tournament, Brown is just six points shy of 2,000 and already ranks fourth in school history in scoring, trailing only Crystal Kelly, Lillie Mason and Tiffany Porter-Talbert, all three of whom are WKU Hall of Famers.
Brown is the school record holder with 1,781 attempted career field goals and the single-season record of 569 attempted field goals this year. Her 753 made field goals in her career rank fifth in program history, and Brown also ranks among the top 10 in program history in both made (434, sixth) and attempted (595, seventh) free throws.
Alongside Ivy Brown, Tashia Brown has a chance to become the winningest senior class in Lady Topper Basketball history. The duo have combined for 105 victories since arriving on The Hill in 2014-15, trailing only Traci Patton (1985-88) and her 110 career wins.
Brown will lead the Lady Toppers into this week’s C-USA Tournament at The Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas, as the No. 2 seed. WKU (21-8, 12-4 C-USA) is set to take on the winner of Wednesday’s Florida Atlantic-UTSA bout on Thursday afternoon at 1:30 p.m. (CT).
