Newport News, Va. – Fordham women's basketball junior captain
Kaitlyn Downey continued her stellar campaign by picking up her second Atlantic 10 Player of the Week honor, the league office announced Monday, sharing the award with Rhode Island's Emmanuelle Tahane. It is the second accolade of her season and her career.
"We really stepped up to the challenge this weekend as a team but Kaitlyn had an incredible individual performance and is really starting to come into her own," Head coach
Stephanie Gaitley said, "This is a well-desesrved award for a super effort!"
Downey put up yet another double-double – her fifth – by matching her career-high of 24 points and grabbing 13 rebounds in the Rams' nine-point win at Saint Louis on Sunday. Fordham was slow out of the gates, scoring just five points in the opening period, but they responded with a big 25-point second quarter, including a 15-0 run going into halftime, a lead they would never relinquish. Downey handed out four of her five assists in the frame and then scored 11 third-quarter points to maintain the team's cushion. She was scorching hot from behind the arc, draining a career-high-matching six on nine attempts and shooting 7-of-14 overall from the floor.
The Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. native is now averaging a double-double on the year through 10 games with 10.4 points and 11.4 rebounds. As of Monday, she is 13
th in the nation for the latter number and is also third with 9.5 defensive rebounds per game. Both figures are tops in the Atlantic 10. The junior saw her percentages jump up with her latest performance, now converting 38.0% of all attempts and 42.0% from distance, second-highest on the team and tops among starters. Her seven blocks are also most on the team, her eight steals are second-most, and her 33 assists are joint-most with
Anna DeWolfe.
Fordham has two home contests this upcoming weekend – against St. Bonaventure on Friday at 2 p.m. and Duquesne on Sunday at 1 p.m. ESPN+ and WFUV will carry live coverage of both games.
