PacWest Weekly Awards (Feb. 27)

IRVINE, Calif. – The last week of the 2022-23 regular season campaign saw Academy of Art men's basketball finish up with a pair of wins to close the year on a season-best six-game winning streak, and now an Urban Knight has claimed one of the final weekly awards of the year as senior guard Klay Brown was named the Pacific West Conference Defender of the Week after he averaged 5.5 defensive rebounds, 3.5 steals and 2.0 blocks per game over the two contests. The award is for games played from Feb. 20-26.

Brown helped the Urban Knights to finish the year with a program record 20th regular season victory, which was also their 10th in the past 12 games, starting first in a rematch against Fresno Pacific this past Thursday on Senior Night where he showed why he is one of the top defensive players in all of NCAA DII by collecting four steals (seventh game of four or more steals) and three blocks (matches season high; has done so five times) to go with four defensive rebounds (five total). He continued to lead the defensive charge against Dominican on Saturday in the season finale, producing another three steals and one block in addition to seven defensive rebounds (eight total). In the national rankings, Brown is seventh in total steals (66; 12 shy of his single-season ART U record 78 last season) and eighth in steals per game (2.36). 

While this is the second such honor of the season for Brown, as he earned the first back in the second week of the campaign on Nov. 21, 2022, this is the fifth PacWest Defender of the Week award in just the two years that he has spent at Academy of Art. That ties Brown for the ART U program-record for PacWest weekly awards in a career, as he matches the five honors that Jase Harrison earned across the 2014-15 and 2015-16 campaigns (four-time Freshman of the Week in 14-15; one-time Defender of the Week in 15-16). Additionally, he further extends his program record specifically for PacWest Defender of the Week honors, as no other Urban Knight has earned the awards more than twice (Alexis Moore).

Overall this is the sixth weekly honor collected by a total of three Urban Knights this season (five Defender of the Week, one Player of the Week), but they just missed out on the program record of the five Urban Knights and seven total awards earned last season. Brown's pair of honors joins the three picked up by senior forward Mike Asante (two-time Defender of the Week Jan. 4 and Jan. 23; Player of the Week Feb. 20) and the Defender of the Week award for junior forward Latrell Williams on Jan. 30.