HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – For the first time since the 1995-96 season, Marshall has been awarded back-to-back league player of the week honors, as junior guard Jon Elmore was named the Conference USA Player of the Week, the league announced.
“Jon put together the most complete shooting game of his career in that second game,” head coach Dan D’Antoni said.
“I have never seen him shoot the ball better than that, but it was efficient as possible.
“He had an offensive rating of 173, which is the best out every game we’ve played in this year. It’s hard to get better than making 77 percent of your field goals and 75 percent of your three-pointers, 9-of-12 from three-pointers, what a great night for him.”
With the award, Elmore is the first Marshall player to win the award three times in one season since James Kelly reached that feat in the 2015-16 season. Marshall now has claimed six player of the week awards this season, the most of any school.
Thanks to junior guard C.J. Burks winning last week’s award, Marshall has claimed player of the week awards in back-to-back weeks for the first time since Keith Veney did so in the 1995-96 season.
The two are the first Marshall duo to win the award in consecutive weeks since Rodney Holden and Skip Henderson accomplished that in the 1986-87 season. The two are the first C-USA duo to accomplish this since La. Tech’s Alex Hamilton and Erik McCree won the awards on Dec. 14 and 21 during the 2015-16 season.
Last week, Elmore Averaged 31.0 points, 7.5 assists, 6.0 rebounds and 3.0 steals. The Charleston, W.Va., native scored his 62 points by shooting 22-of-34 (64.7 percent) from the field, 9-of-17 (52.9 percent) and 9-of-11 (81.8 percent) at the charity stripe.
Against Charlotte, Elmore scored a career-high 38 points and made a career-high nine three-pointers … when Elmore made his ninth three-pointer, he became the first C-USA player to make nine in a single game since Akeem Richmond of ECU did so at SMU on Feb. 23, 2013. The junior finished 9 of 12 from 3-point range, the seventh time in school history a player hit at least as many from behind the arc.
Elmore passed four names on the C-USA all-time scoring list: Marquette’s Travis Diener (1,691), Southern Mississippi’s Jeremy Wise (1,691), UCF’s Keith Clanton (1,718) and Louisiana Tech’s Alex Hamilton (1,722) to move into No. 13 on the conference’s career points leaderboard when he scored 38 points vs. Charlotte.
The junior reached his 38 points by making 13-of-17 (76.5 percent) of his FGs, 9-of-12 (75 percent) of his shots from behind the arc and going a perfect 3-of-3 (100 percent) at the free throw line.
When the Herd played Old Dominion, Elmore scored a game-high 24 points and 11 assists, while collecting his seventh double-double with points and assists against the No. 1 scoring defense in the league. Elmore scored his 24 points by going 9-of-17 (52.9 percent) from the field and 6-of-8 (75 percent) from free throws.
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