Tag: Weekly Awards

Florida closer Brandon Neely earns SEC Pitcher of the Week honors

After hurling six scoreless innings against Florida State and Texas A&M, Florida closer Brandon Neely is the SEC Pitcher of the Week.

After a shaky start to the season, Florida’s closer, Brandon Neely, has been named the SEC Pitcher of the Week after throwing six scoreless innings during Week 5 of the college baseball season.

Neely first appeared in a losing effort against Florida State. He struck out the side on 18 pitches, keeping him fresh for a three-inning save on Friday night against Texas A&M. Neely struck out another three, surrendering just one hit in his first appearance against the Aggies, and then returned on Sunday to go two more.

Although he walked two batters in the series finale, Neely earned the win after a Tyler Shelnut go-ahead, two-run home run. Luke McNeillie closed out the game because Neely had some bicep tightness, but he should be good moving forward.

On Friday, head coach Kevin O’Sullivan expressed frustration over Neely’s usage through the first 17 games. He said that they wanted to use him more like Arkansas did Hagan Smith a year ago. Winning on Friday nights is big, and Sully knows he has perhaps the nation’s best Sunday arm in Jac Caglianone to lean on to close things out.

A preseason All-American, Neely is just starting to live up to expectations. This might not be the last time he takes home an SEC weekly award, especially considering how young the rest of Florida’s bullpen is.

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Award winning week for Michigan State baseball

Two Spartans took home awards from MSU’s outstanding week:

Michigan State had an outstanding week on the field this past week. The Spartans defeated Notre Dame in an extra inning thriller on Tuesday, before defeating Oakland on Wednesday heading into a weekend sweep over Western Illinois.

With the outstanding week comes winning awards. The Spartans won two big awards for their performance this past week.

Bryan Broecker was named to the Collegiate Baseball Players of the Week List while Jack Frank won the Big Ten’s Player of the Week award.

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Florida earns plenty of Week 1 praise from Athlon Sports

Athlon Sports is handing out week one awards, and the Florida Gators appear more than once on the list.

Florida’s upset win over Utah to start the Billy Napier era was one of the more talked about stories over week one of the college football season, so it’s not too surprising to see the Gators pop up twice on Athlon Sports‘ weekly awards list.

Quarterback [autotag]Anthony Richardson[/autotag] earned offensive player of the week honors. Despite throwing for just 168 yards in the win, Richardson added another 106 yards on the ground and three touchdowns. He also dazzled with a few big plays, including the pump-fake two-point conversion that set social media on fire.

“The arrival of new Florida coach Billy Napier was expected to help Richardson take the next step in his development. So far, so good. Richardson’s play was instrumental in Florida’s upset over Utah.”

Athlon Sports also named Florida its team of the week. Richardson was a big factor in Florida taking home the weekly honor, but the defense gets a mention for some clutch work in the second half.

“The Billy Napier era got off to a strong start on Saturday night with a 29-26 victory over Utah… Napier’s play-calling helped the Gators average 7.2 yards per play behind a stellar night from quarterback Anthony Richardson… Florida’s defense allowed 6.3 yards per play to the Utes but came up with two key stops.

“The Gators stopped Utah’s first drive after halftime on downs at the one-yard line and intercepted quarterback Cameron Rising in the end zone with less than one minute remaining to seal the victory.”

Coming into the season, the national expectations for the Gators were fairly low. Beating Utah changed that narrative and makes Florida an easy pick for week one. But now the bar has been raised, and Napier’s group needs to live up to the standard by beating Kentucky. A blowout victory might earn UF team of the week honors once against, but it won’t be as easy to impress this time around.

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College Wire’s Big Ten team of the week

Big Ten editors voted on the top performers in Week 1 with our ‘Team of the Week’, check out to see who made the cut.

Week 1 was officially in the books on Saturday evening. All sights are now firmly on Week 2. Before we close the chapter on the first full week of games, our Big Ten editors weighed in on the top performers of the week.

Each College Wire Big Ten site’s editor came up with their top performances at each positon.

The Voters:

Without further ado, let’s dive into the selections made by our editorial team:

Instant analysis of Chiefs’ Week 16 win over Falcons

Lightning-fast analysis of the Kansas City Chiefs’ Week 16 game against the Atlanta Falcons.

This game was a struggle for the Kansas City Chiefs offensively. The Atlanta Falcons came to Arrowhead Stadium and were unwilling to lay down without putting up a fight. In the end, it came to a clutch drive by the offense and an incredible stand by the Chiefs defense and special teams. The Falcons would miss a game-tying field goal, surrendering the football to Kansas City with nine seconds remaining. The 17-14 win over Atlanta means the Chiefs have punched their ticket to playoffs as the No. 1 seed in the AFC.