Colorado point guard McKinley Wright was named the Pac-12's Player of the Week on Monday and teammate Jabari Walker the Freshman of the Week after they led the Buffaloes to three wins last week.
The two CU players beat out Arizona freshman Bennedict Mathurin, who scored 31 points in UA's 98-64 win at Oregon State last Thursday, and USC's Evan Mobley, who averaged 17.7 points and 6.7 rebounds in USC's wins over UC Riverside, Washington and Washington State. Both Mathurin and Mobley were nominated by their schools for both weekly awards.
While Colorado picked up a road win at Utah, then beat California and Stanford at home, the Wildcats played only one game thanks to COVID-19 issues with Oregon that postponed their scheduled Feb. 16 game at Eugene.
Over three games, Wright averaged 12.0 points and 8.0 assists while Walker had a breakout week in which he averaged 16.3 points and 9.7 rebounds.
Mathurin was named the Pac-12’s Freshman of the Week on Jan. 4 after collecting 24 points and 11 rebounds at Washington State, but was even more effective at OSU.
Mathurin shot 10 for 12 from the field and hit 6 of 7 3-pointers against the Beavers to move into the UA freshman record sheet. The six 3s tied an Arizona freshman record, his 85.7% 3-point shooting set a new UA freshman record, while his 83.3% overall field-goal percentage was the second-best ever by a freshman.
Mathurin, who was making his first start of the season at OSU, also became just the third freshman in Division I to score 31 or more points a game so far this season.
Overall for the season, the freshman from Montreal is averaging 12.0 points and 4.8 rebounds while leading the Wildcats in 3-point shooting percentage (48.8) and leading all perimeter players in field-goal shooting percentage (52.7).
Over his past four games, Mathurin is averaging 18.5 points while shooting 63.8% overall from the field, 60% from 3-point range and 84.2% from the free throw line.
