Richie Veihl steps up to the plate in the season opener (Photo: Tracy Maple).

Two More Tigers, Veihl and Brown, Earn SCIAC AOW Honors

LOS ANGELES, Calif. (Feb. 11, 2009) – Occidental student-athletes have been putting up some impressive numbers that have been recognized by the conference over the last few weeks. This past week Richie Veihl and Brianne Brown were named the Male and Female SCIAC Athlete of the Week for a pair of incredible performances. 

Veihl has begun his senior season with a bang as the Tigers’ starting third baseman. In two games this weekend he was grand as he connected for five hits, including three homeruns. On Sunday afternoon Veihl was 4-for-7 with a solo homerun and two grand slams in back-to-back innings. He drove in nine runs as Oxy went on to defeat Whitman 28-3.

Overall this weekend Veihl drove in 10 runs, scored four and collected 14 total bases. He finished the series with a 1.077 slugging percentage and was perfect in the field with six putouts and eight assists at third base with an inning at first. Veihl has three grand slams in five games thus far this season.

As featured on d3baseball.com, Veihl is currently leading the nation with four homeruns and 14 RBIs.

On the women’s side, 2007-08 SCIAC Player of the Year, Brianne Brown averaged 22 points per game in just 23 minutes of action per game this week as the Tigers improved to 8-2 with wins over Cal Lutheran and Pomona-Pitzer.

At home on Saturday Brown scored 20 first half points on 8-for-9 shooting from the field including a 4-for-4 performance from three-point range. She finished the game with 25 points (shooting 76.9%, 10-for-13) in limited action, adding three steals, two assists and three rebounds.

Earlier in the week she supplied the Tigers with the only double figure scoring performance of any player against CLU with 19. Additionally she got five steals, dishing out another pair of assists and pulling down five boards. She finished the week shooting 65.4% from the field overall.

Brown currently leads Oxy with 12.2 points per game and is among the top three in rebounds per game (5.7), assists (47), steals (53) and blocks (12).