BELTON, Texas- It has not taken Josiah Johnson or Ashley Faux long to make an impact with their respective teams this season, though both are newcomers. On Monday, it was announced by the American Southwest Conference (ASC), that each had been named “the best in the west” and earned West Division Player of the Week honors.
Johnson, the UMHB men’s basketball team’s point guard, poured in 77 points over the course of two games this past week. He posted video-game like numbers, shooting 51 percent from the field and averaged 38.5 points per game in those two contests. Not to mention he grabbed a game-clinching rebound in a narrow 75-73 win over East Texas Baptist on Saturday. And get this, the sophomore is the leading scorer in points per game this season across all of D3, with 30.2 points per game.
“Josiah is going to be a really good player,” said head coach Clif Carroll. “He’s a really talented kid, he’s a nice kid, he’s a great Christian kid. He is the kind of guy that we want in our program and that our fans are going to love and root for. He’s going to grow into one of the better players in the league.”
The honor marks Johnson’s second of the season, as he was also named the West Division Player of the Week on November 30.
Faux, a freshman forward for the UMHB women’s basketball team, made her mark in a big way against LeTourneau on December 18, one of the main reasons she received the honor in a week that spanned from December 14 to January 3. In the Cru’s 67-64 victory, Faux scored a career-high 16 points and then followed that up this Saturday with a double-double of 11 points and 10 rebounds in the exhibition win over North American, though that performance did not count towards conference honors.
In head coach Mark Morefield’s words, it was the play of Faux and freshman Cheyanne Bonilla “that won them the game” at LeTourneau.
It is Faux’s first such honor of the season, though her teammate Taylor Kollmorgen received the same honor back on December 8.
On Thursday, both the men’s and women’s basketball teams will face off against UT Dallas to open up conference play in Richardson, Texas. The women tip off at 5:30 p.m. and the men play at 7:30 p.m.
