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.
Kelsey Plum isn't just chasing the all-time NCAA women's basketball scoring record. She has become the most unstoppable force in the game today. In fact, no player has consistently dominated like she has in her senior season since Brittney Griner ruled the lane at Baylor.
Plum seems to rule just about everyone on the court these days, and for the second time this month, she is the espnW national player of the week.
Plum's 44-point night against Stanford on Sunday followed a 24-point effort against Cal on Friday, and she now has Griner in her sights for second on the NCAA career scoring list. With 3,138 points, the 5-foot-8 Plum trails Griner by 145 points.
Surpassing Jackie Stiles' NCAA-record 3,393 points seems more and more likely with each 40-point game.
Sunday marked the fifth such performance of Plum's career.
She torched the Cardinal, shooting 7-of-8 from 3-point range and 17-for-27 overall. Unfortunately, her typically reliable teammates offered little help, combining to make just six of their 37 field goal attempts, and the Huskies squandered an 18-point lead in a 72-68 loss. It also cost Washington a chance to stay even with Oregon State atop the Pac-12, a standing that Plum has insisted for weeks is more important to her than the scoring mark.
Plum -- whose only miss from beyond the arc on Sunday would have tied the score late -- has bumped up her scoring average to 31.3 points per game, more than six points better than anyone in the country. Despite being the focal point of every opposing defense, she has maintained an unlikely level of efficiency too. Only two guards in the nation shoot a higher percentage from the field than Plum's 53.5 percent accuracy (UConn's Gabby Williams and Portland State's Sidney Rielly).
Washington has eight games left in the regular season and will have at least one each in the Pac-12 tournament and the NCAA tournament, which means Plum needs to average 25.5 points in those 10 games to catch Stiles and become the sport's most prolific scorer.
Also considered: Jackie Johnson, Loyola Marymount; Sydney Wiese, Oregon State; A'ja Wilson, South Carolina
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) | Washington's Plum (Jan. 9) | Maryland's Jones (Jan. 16) | UConn's Samuelson (Jan. 23)