ST. LOUIS, Missouri – The U.S. Basketball Writers Association has selected BYU’s Richie Saunders as one of its five Oscar Robertson National Players of the Week for games ending the week of Sunday, February 23.
For the 2024-25 season, the USBWA continues its national player of the week program that has been affiliated with the Oscar Robertson Trophy since the 2009-10 season. Prior to last season, the USBWA had recognized just one player each week.
Each Tuesday during the regular season, designated USBWA board members will select five standouts from the 31 Division I conference players of the week to be recognized. This week's selections were chosen from a list of the conferences that named a player of the week on Monday.
Saunders becomes the first Cougar to earn the award since Elijah Bryant earned the honor on Feb. 28, 2017, sharing the honors with Oregon’s Nate Bittle, North Carolina A&T’s Jahnathan Lamothe, Yale’s Bez Mbeng and Alabama’s Mark Sears.
Saunders, a 6-foot-5 forward, led the Cougars to consecutive ranked wins for the first time since 1988, including a 34-point victory over No. 23 Kansas at the Marriott Center. In their second consecutive win over the Jayhawks, Saunders finished with 22 points going 9-of-13 from the field and 4-of-8 from 3-point range.
In BYU’s 96-95 win at No. 19 Arizona, the junior from Riverton scored 23 points, shooting 8-of-10 from the field, 3-of-4 from the field and 4-of-5 from the free throw line. He scored the final four points of the game for the Cougars including a pair of free throws with 3.2 seconds remaining to hand the Wildcats their third loss at the McKale Center and first to an unranked opponent.
For the week, Saunders averaged 22.5 points per game shooting 73.9 percent from the field, 58.3 percent from behind the arc and 80.0 percent from the free throw line.