UConn’s Katie Lou Samuelson Wins AAC Player of the Year

One day after the UConn Huskies were showered with awards and honors from the AAC, Katie Lou Samuelson was named conference player of the year in an awards ceremony at Mohegan Sun Saturday morning.

The junior guard was the Huskies’ leading scorer at 18.3 points per game and leads the nation in three-point shooting percentage, hitting 49 percent of her attempts behind the arc.

Some of her best performances of the season include 22 points in the beatdown of Wichita State, where she hit 6-of-8 from three and gave out nine assists. Against Temple, she scored 27 points — her highest total in conference play — 17 of which came in the first half.

Samuelson’s impact was highlighted at East Carolina when she went to the bench in the second quarter and the Huskies failed to score for nearly seven minutes. When she finally returned, UConn closed the half on a 10-0 run.

A few other awards were tendered Saturday morning, including the coach of the year award which for the first time went to USF head coach Jose Fernandez. Interesting move by the AAC to not give the award to the best coach in the country, Geno Auriemma, who happens to be in their conference and has won the award four times. Nobody’s going to lose any sleep over this snubbing, but lol AAC.

The American Athletic Conference women’s basketball championship kicks off later today with early-round games. UConn’s first game will be at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday against the winner of the 8/9 game between Tulane and Memphis on ESPNU.