Lady Tops earn three more C-USA honors
Published 10:09 am Tuesday, March 6, 2018
- Western Kentucky's Dee Givens (right) dribbles against Old Dominion's MaKayla Timmons Thursday, February 8, 2018, during the Lady Tops' 62-48 win at E.A. Diddle Arena. (Bac Totrong/photo@bgdailynews.com)
One day after three players earned All-Conference USA team accolades, three Lady Toppers picked up more individual honors Tuesday.
WKU’s Ivy Brown was named C-USA Defensive Player of the Year, Raneem Elgedawy earned C-USA Freshman of the Year honors and Dee Givens brought home the C-USA Sixth Player of the Year award.
With Brown’s Defensive Player of the Year award, WKU has now captured that honor in three of its four seasons as a member of the league; former Lady Topper Kendall Noble won the award following the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons. Elgedawy and Givens are the first Lady Toppers to be named Freshman and Sixth Player of the Year since WKU’s move to the league four years ago.
Overall, WKU is the first C-USA school to sweep all three awards in a single season, and the three individual player honors are the most the Lady Toppers have earned in a single season in program history.
Ivy Brown has emerged as a nightly double-double threat in 2017-18 with a C-USA-best 15; her 33 career double-doubles rank sixth in program history. The 2014 Miss Kentucky Basketball leads all C-USA players with 9.8 rebounds per game this season and ranks second in the conference with 2.5 steals and 1.6 blocks per outing.
Brown has also established herself as one of the top 3-point shooters in the conference, ranking fifth in the league by knocking down 42.1 percent (56-of-133) of her shots from beyond the arc. Brown bookended her regular season with career-best 31-point games at Iowa (Nov. 11) and UTEP (March 3) en route to picking up her second straight First Team honors.
Elgedawy has enjoyed one of the strongest freshman campaigns for WKU in recent memory. She has started all 29 games for WKU and is averaging 8.8 points and 7.3 rebounds per game with five double-doubles, the most in a single season by a WKU freshman since Crystal Kelly in 2004-05.
The only freshman ranked in the top 15 in C-USA in rebounding this season, Elgedawy also leads all freshmen in the league with her 48.1 percent shooting mark from the field and ranks second with 1.2 blocks per game.
Elgedawy is WKU’s first Freshman of the Year honoree by a conference office since Kendall Noble claimed the honor from the Sun Belt during the 2013-14 campaign as a redshirt freshman.
After breaking out in the Hawkeye Challenge as a starter at the beginning of the season, Givens settled into her role as one of WKU’s top reserves, being the first player off the bench in 10 of WKU’s contests. The redshirt sophomore helped to key the Lady Toppers’ upset of then-No. 16 Missouri in the season opener with a career-best 20 points and added 16 more in the near-upset of Iowa on its home floor Nov. 11.
Givens averaged 10.5 points and 4.9 rebounds per game in C-USA play The Lexington native collected her first career double-double with 16 points and 10 rebounds against FIU on Jan. 11 and reached double figures in scoring in nine of WKU’s 16 conference outings, including a streak of seven straight games from Jan. 6 through Jan. 28.
Brown, Elgedawy and Givens will lead the Lady Toppers into this week’s C-USA Tournament 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 matchup Thursday afternoon at 1:30 p.m. (CT).