Editor's note: Charlie Creme, Graham Hays and Mechelle Voepel each vote to determine espnW's national player of the week, which is awarded every week of the women's college basketball season.
The Connecticut Huskies don't have the market cornered on women's basketball history. It only seems that way.
To prove it, let's travel nearly 3,000 miles west of Storrs, to the University of Washington, where another Huskies star is making a run at the game's greatest individual record.
Much of the sport is focused on UConn's march toward breaking its own NCAA Division I mark of 90 consecutive wins -- a streak that could ultimately push well into triple digits -- and perhaps an unprecedented fifth straight national championship. But, thanks to a huge scoring week even by her standards, Washington's Kelsey Plum is in position to seriously challenge Jackie Stiles as the top career women's scorer in NCAA Division I history.
In No. 12 Washington's biggest win of the season, Plum scored 39 points, including 16 of her team's 20 points during a key stretch in the second half, as the Huskies outlasted Pac-12 preseason favorite and No. 9 UCLA in Seattle 82-70 on Sunday. That only slightly outdid Friday's performance: 34 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 steals in a 10-point win over Southern California.
Plum, espnW's national player of the week, has scored 2,971 career points. Stiles finished her career at Southwest Missouri State (now Missouri State) with 3,393 points. With 13 regular-season games remaining and assuming the Huskies play at least two games in the Pac-12 tournament (reaching the semifinals) and three in the NCAA tournament (reaching the Sweet 16), Plum would need to average 23.5 points per game the rest of the season to catch Stiles. That seems pretty reasonable considering the 5-foot-8 senior, who earlier in the season became the top scorer in Pac-12 conference history, is averaging 30.7 points per game, which also happens to be an astonishing 5.5 points clear of the second-best Division I point producer this season (Old Dominion's Jennie Simms).
Playing all 80 minutes against the Bruins and Trojans, Plum -- who controls everything the Huskies do on offense -- turned over the ball only four times and made 26 of 50 field goal attempts, including 8 of 19 from 3-point range.
In fact, although known largely as a volume shooter in her first three seasons at Washington, Plum seems to have mastered the art of efficiency -- even as her point production has increased. Never in her career has Plum shot better than 50 percent from the field, made 40 percent of her 3-point attempts or converted 90 percent of her free throws. This season she is doing all three -- 52.9 field goal percentage, 45.1 3-point percentage, 90.2 free throw percentage -- while also sporting a 2.8-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio, which is more than twice her previous best.
That kind of shooting accuracy is very reminiscent of Stiles. And sometime in March, Plum might unseat her atop the scoring charts.
Also considered: Brooke Schulte, DePaul; Morgan William, Mississippi State
Previous winners: Notre Dame's Ogunbowale (Nov. 21) | Virginia Tech's Hicks (Nov. 28) | Duke's Greenwell (Dec. 5) | UConn's Williams (Dec. 12) | Temple's Fitzgerald (Dec. 19) | Cal's Anigwe (Dec. 26) | South Dakota's Arens (Jan. 2)