March 9, 2011

LAS VEGAS (UNLVRebels.com) - The UNLV Rebels Tayler Van Acker has been named the Mountain West Conference's Player of the Week for games played from Feb. 28-March 6. This is the second consecutive week that a Rebel has claimed the award, as Pauline Monreal did so last week.

Van Acker, a freshman from Anaheim, Calif., hit safely in all five games last weekend at UNLV's Eller Media Stadium Classic. She recorded a .500 batting average, as she went 8-for-16 at the plate in five starts. She began the tournament with an RBI-single and scored a run against San Diego. She followed that up with a 1-for-1 performance against Troy, which included a game-tying, RBI-single in the sixth inning, followed by a game-winning RBI off a sacrifice fly in the seventh. On Saturday, she went a combined 4-for-7 with two runs scored in wins over Bradley and Kansas. In the Classic's finale, she came up big scoring a game-tying run in the sixth, which helped propel the game into extra innings. With San Jose State holding a 2-1 eighth-inning lead, she doubled home the tying run and then came around later to score the game-winner. Defensively, she was perfect in the field going 14-for-14 in putouts.