Closing out the regular season with a career-best performance earned UC Santa Barbara's Lauren Pedersen the final Big West Women’s Basketball Player of the Week honor of the 2008-09 season.

In the win over UC Riverside Thursday night, which clinched the second consecutive Big West title for UC Santa Barbara, Pedersen scored a career-high 28 points, 17 of which came in the second half. At one point she drained nine straight points to hold off the Highlanders. Along with her career-best 28 points, the Brea, Calif., native tallied a career-high eight field goals. She also added five assists and four rebounds to her total.

Two days later at Long Beach State she played a season-low 19 minutes, since the Gauchos had already secured the No. 1 seed in the Big West Tournament, and still led all scorers with 15 points. Pedersen finishes the regular season as the only player in Gaucho history to lead the team in points, assists, rebounds and steals.

For the week, she tallied a .636 field goal percentage and a .833 free throw percentage, while averaging 21.5 points, 4.5 rebounds and 2.5 steals per contest.

Others nominated: Ashley Blake (Cal State Northridge), Paige Minutn (UC Davis), Kim Barnes (UC Irvine), Kemie Nkele (UC Riverside)