Matehya Bryant Award Player of the Week Week Of 1/9/2023 Sport Women's Basketball School UC Riverside Year Position Forward Hometown Sammamish, Wash. High School Eastlake HS Matehya Bryant twice scored in double figures with continued stellar play on the glass as UC Riverside split a Big West road weekend, averaging 16.0 points and 10.5 rebounds en route to picking up a first Big West Player of the Week distinction. Bryant’s hook shot with 15 seconds remaining gave UCR a 53-52 triumph on Saturday afternoon over then-first-place CSUN, which had started the day a perfect 3-0 in conference play, Bryant had a game-high 18 points on 7-of-10 shooting from the floor and 4-of-6 at the line. The forward grabbed a team-best seven boards to go along with one assist and game bests of three steals and two blocks in 36 minutes. Bryant had gone for a team-best 14 points on 7-of-12 field goal shooting, a game-high 14 rebounds, two blocks, two steals and an assist in Thursday night’s loss at Cal State Fullerton. Bryant currently ranks third in The Big West in rebounding at 8.2 per game. The fourth-year junior and second-year transfer from Grand Canyon has turned in the top two single-game outputs on the boards thus far this season, with 19 at CSU Bakersfield on Dec. 29 and 17 at home against LIU on Nov. 26. Bryant has appeared in all 14 contests for UCR in 2022-23, drawing 13 starts, and is scoring at a 8.9 points-per-game clip, second on the team. Bryant is UC Riverside’s first Big West weekly honoree of the season, and in fact the first since Keilanei Cooper back on Jan. 18, 2021.