PacWest Weekly Awards (Jan. 17)

IRVINE, Calif. – Just one week after earning his first Pacific West Conference weekly award, Academy of Art men' basketball junior guard Klay Brown kept up his defensive prowess and has collected his second consecutive PacWest Defender of the Week honor. The award is for games played from Jan. 10-16. 

The defensive effort of Brown was a key factor in the 1-1 week for the Urban Knights, as the PacWest's leader in steals (2.5 per game) averaged exactly that number in the two contests last week, grabbing a pair of steals against UH Hilo on Jan. 13 before following that up with another three in ART U's 83-70 victory over HPU on Jan. 15. With a total of 37 steals on the season, he now has nine more than the next closest players, which happen to be teammates and graduate student guards Deang Deang (28) and Denny Slay (27). All told, Brown also chipped in an average of 1.5 blocks and 5.0 defensive rebounds, including two blocks to tie his season high in the triumph over the Sharks.

Brown is the first Urban Knight this season to earn multiple PacWest weekly awards, grabbing the second of his career and bringing the total number of honors that ART U has earned this season to five. He joins teammates Christian Popoola Jr. (Nov. 15), Joshua Bagley (Dec. 6), and Latrell Williams (Dec. 13), further extending the new program record number of selections in a single season, topping the previous record of one which ART U had done each year starting with the 2013-14 campaign through 2017-18.