BYU Basketball: Yoeli Childs and Elijah Bryant named First Team All-WCC; BYU Women make list as well

The West Coast Conference has concluded yet another basketball season, an all the votes are in for the various awards. With BYU locking up a three seed for the tournament, we knew the team wouldn’t be locked out of the awards but the question was who, and how many Cougars, would be recognized. Today we received our answer as the WCC announced the 2017-18 All-WCC Basketball Teams and Individual Honors.

BYU missed on the individual honors, but had two players (Elijah Bryant, Yoeli Childs) named to the Men’s First Team and one (TJ Haws) under the Honorable Mentions.

Elijah Bryant finished the regular season averaging 17.6 points per game, 2.5 assists, and 6.5 rebounds. In making the first team, he increased his scoring by almost six points per game, and almost three rebounds per game. More importantly was the leadership he showed on the court as BYU started the season with a young, inexperienced team.

Yoeli Childs was a force from the start and ended his regular season averaging 17.4 points per game, 2.3 assists, 8.7 rebounds, and 1.9 blocks per game. Just like Bryant, there was significant improvement from last year as he increased his scoring by eight points, his assists by one, and added an additional half a block per game. Some of this is unquestionably due to his larger role on the court, but he proved he was up to the challenge while helping lead the team to another 20+ win season.

TJ Haws struggled for part of the season as he found his role a bit different from last year, but still managed to put up 12 points per game, 4.2 assists, and 2.8 rebounds in his honorable mention season. He led the team in with 131 assists and managed a 2 to 1 assist to turnover ratio as he looked to involve other scorers throughout the season.

As expected, the Bulldogs of Gonzaga took over the most slots in the All-WCC teams as they locked up seven spots (Including honorable mentions) with BYU, Saint Mary’s, San Diego, and Pacific each getting three players on the lists. J

ock Landale from Saint Mary’s took the player of the year award, while Coach of the year went to Mark Few of Gonzaga. Namdi Okonkwo from Pacific took home the Defensive player of the year hardware and Zach Norvell Jr. from Gonzaga won the Newcomer of the year. For a full breakdown of the awards and teams, you can click here for the announcement on wccsports.com or see below:

The Lady Cougars also received some recognition as freshman Sara Hamson earned the Defensive Player of the year honor. Hamson finished second in the NCAA with 4.3 blocks per game. BYU also had Brenna Chase and Cassie Devashrayee earn All-WCC First team honors. Hamson was also named to the WCC All-Freshman team.