Utah Tech’s Breaunna Gillen Named to Player of the Year Watchlist

Utah Tech Womern's basketball tips off its season in a little over a week and their best player has been named to the Becky Hammon Award watch list. This is a big deal for the program and congratulations to Breaunna.

Here's the press release from UT Athletics Media Relations: (Full link to article)

Utah Tech fifth-year guard Breaunna Gillen has been named to the 25-player preseason watch list for the Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year, presented by Her Hoop Stats.

Gillen, who was tabbed as the 2023-24 Western Athletic Conference Preseason Player of the Year, is the lone WAC representative on the list, which includes women's basketball student-athletes from 23 teams and 16 conferences overall.

Gillen (5-9; West Jordan, Utah/Copper Hills HS), who was either at or near the top of the WAC scoring list throughout the entire 2022-23 campaign en route to first team all-WAC honors, wound up as the conference's second leading scorer at 17.8 points per game.

The fifth-year guard finished last season as the WAC's leader in assists at 6.45 apg, and finished in the top-10 overall in assist/turnover ratio (2^nd; 1.77), field goal percentage (5^th; .438), and free throw percentage (10^th; .744).

Gillen scored in double figures in all 31 games during the 2022-23 campaign, and in 43-straight games dating back to the 2021-22 campaign, with 12 starts of 20 points or more, including a career-high 26 points in a home win vs. Utah State (11/15).

Six of those 12 20-point outings came in WAC play, including a three-game stretch that saw her score WAC season highs of 24 points against both UTRGV (2/18) and California Baptist (2/25) that bookended a 20-point night at Seattle U (2/23). In that UTRGV win, Gillen became the fifth member of Utah Tech's 1,000-point club, and she enters her final season ranked third all-time in program history in career points (1,112).

Gillen, who is Utah Tech's career assists leader (393), also became just the third player in program history with over 1,000 points and at least 200 assists. In addition, her 200 assists last year eclipsed her previous school record of 156 set last season, while her 552 points were the second-most on Utah Tech's single-season list.

The senior also posted six double-doubles on the year, five of which came with 10 or more assists, and she was named WAC Player of the Week twice (11/14 and 11/21).

Utah Tech begins its fourth season of NCAA Division I play on Monday, Nov. 6, with a matinee match-up vs. La Verne inside the Burns Arena at 11 a.m.