Hawaii basketball: Shooting guards Eddie Stansberry, Julissa Tago sweep Big West weekly honors
A feel-good evening of basketball on Saturday produced some lasting effects for the Hawaii men’s and women’s basketball teams on Monday.
The Rainbow Warriors and Wahine pulled off a shooting guard sweep as Eddie Stansberry and Julissa Tago were named the Big West men’s and women’s players of the week.
Stansberry and Tago combined to score 41 points and go 8-for-20 on 3-pointers for their teams in Saturday’s doubleheader sweep of Long Beach State (68-44 for the Wahine, who won their second straight game by 24 points) and Cal State Northridge (80-75 for the Warriors, who surged back from 17 points down with 11 minutes left).
Shooting guard Eddie Stansberry, the Big West player is the week for a third time this season, reflected on some of the magic #HawaiiMBB pulled off on its 4-0 homestand.
“It shows that we’re battle-tested. We wouldn’t be anywhere without the fans. This place was rocking.” pic.twitter.com/6fZ7C6n8hh
— Hawaii Warrior World (@hawaiiwworld) February 4, 2020
Stansberry, who hit a combined 10 3-pointers in UH’s last two games — including the game-winner with 3.3 seconds left against UC Davis the previous Saturday — has 11 20-point games this season. He is the first Rainbow Warrior to receive three Big West player of the week awards in the same season, and the first for the program pick up a trio of same-season conference weekly honors since Carl English in the 2002-03 WAC. That’s now happened only four times in program history — and no UH player has received four weekly awards in the same season.
On Saturday, Tago (19 points) narrowly missed out on her sixth 20-point game of the season. Tago matched her season high of 25 points in a 94-70 spanking of UC Irvine on Thursday. She’s averaging a league-high 18.4 points per game in conference play.
She is the first Wahine player since Tanya Smith in the 2007-08 WAC to receive multiple conference player of the week honors in the same year. The last Wahine player to do that in the Big West was Tania Brunton in the 1995-96 season, UH’s last year in the BWC before joining the WAC in women’s hoops through 2012.
Julissa Tago became the first #HawaiiWBB player since Tanya Smith in the 2007-08 WAC to receive multiple conference player of the week honors in a single season.
“It’s pretty surreal, the point that we’re at right now, but I’m just excited to keep this hot shooting … going.” pic.twitter.com/dHqsucHm5x
— Hawaii Warrior World (@hawaiiwworld) February 4, 2020
Both the Rainbow Warriors (14-6, 5-1 Big West) and Wahine (11-10, 5-3) head to the Central California Coast for a pair of road games this week. The men begin at UC Santa Barbara (14-8, 3-4) on Thursday and follow up at Cal Poly (5-16, 2-5) Saturday, while the women do the reverse, beginning at Cal Poly (5-13, 2-5) Thursday and finishing at UCSB (8-12, 3-4) on Saturday.
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