[2022-2023 MIAA Women's Basketball Athletes of the Week: Week 1]

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association announced its second MIAA Women’s Basketball Athlete of the Week, presented by Shift Group, for the 2022-23 season.
 
MIAA Women’s Basketball Athlete of the Week – Alayzha Knapp – Central Oklahoma     
Alayzha Knapp led the Bronchos opening weekend, averaging 23.0 points, 4.0 rebounds, 2.5 blocked shots and 2.0 steals a game. The junior 6-2 forward shot 57.6 percent (19-of-33) from the field, including 75.0 percent (3-of-4) from 3-point range, and 71.4 percent (5-of-7) from the free throw line. Knapp opened the season with a career-high 22 points in the Bronchos 99-84 win over Missouri S&T, then bettered that the next day with 24 in UCO’s 78-64 victory over Oklahoma Christian.
 
NOTABLE PERFORMANCES
Brionna Budgetts – Missouri Western
For a second consecutive game Brionna Budgetts led the Griffons in scoring, shooting 9-of-20 for a game-high 26 points while snagging six rebounds and finding one assist in an 81-72 win over Truman State. The junior guard was perfect from the charity stripe, making 4-of-4, as she has not missed in her last three games with an overall 7-of-7 mark. She made 4-of-12 from three-point range, which is the second time this season she’s made four or more threes. With two steals, Budgetts now has three games this season with multiple takeaways.
 
Lacy Stokes – Missouri Southern
Lacy Stokes helped lead the Lions to another win to begin the season. Stokes finished with 17 points, nine assists, four rebounds and three steals in the teams 83-66 win over Angelo State at home. The sophomore guard became the second quickest Lion to dish out 200 career assists needing only 36 games and is 18th now in career assists in program history. With the win, it now marks five straight for the Lions who have now beat four teams that were mentioned in either the WBCA or D2SIDA polls. Each of the five opponents the Lions have played so far were picked within the top-four of their respective conference preseason polls.
 
Aubree Dewey – Washburn
Aubree Dewey led the Ichabods in scoring last week as she averaged 14.5 points per game and added 3.5 rebounds per game and 3.5 assists per game. The junior guard scored a career-high 20 points in the win over Southern Nazarene. She was 8-of-14 from the field and 2-for-3 from deep and chipped in three assists and three rebounds.
 
ALSO NOMINATED
Kelsey Fields (Northwest Missouri), Brooke Littrell (Central Missouri), Shiloh McCool (Nebraska Kearney), Katie Wagner (Fort Hays State), Courtney Lee (Northeastern State), Brittney Ho (Newman)

ABOUT SHIFT GROUP
Shift Group is a training and recruiting platform placing talented, retired collegiate and professional athletes in high caliber Software Sales positions. Athletes spend their lives engaging in team-based activities where they are rewarded for performance-based outcomes. Competitive drive, work ethic, and the desire to win are innate qualities of those performing at elite levels. Athletes at this level must have discipline, resilience, and grit. These are the intangible parts of any elite athlete’s identity. When combined with confidence, curiosity, and coachability, these traits separate great athletes – and great salespeople. Salesmanship can be taught. It requires the right attitude, habits, and skills – learned, practiced, and repeated in the right environment in order to be mastered. Once an athlete finishes Shift Group training, they get access to hiring managers at Startups, Fortune 500’s, and other organizations building out sales teams across the globe – with the Shift Group team coaching them through every step of the process.