Brent Mutis, CapU sport info & compliance officer
The 2022-23 PACWEST women's basketball All-Star teams have been announced and four Capilano Blues players earned recognition.
Kirsten Abo and Ida Jonsson-Ojala are First-Team All-Stars, Meagan Briggs is a Second-Team All-Star and Venica Davignon is part of the conference's All-Rookie Team.
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Abo, who was a PACWEST Second-Team All-Star a season ago, put forth her best season in Blues colours as she led the team in scoring at 12.8 points per game and recorded career highs in three-pointers made (32), three-point percentage (32.7), assists (73) and steals (39). She scored in double digits in 10 of the team's 18 games and posted a PACWEST season-best 40 points in a Feb. 3 win over Vancouver Island University (VIU). Abo's assist total and 4.1 assist-per-game average were both tops in the conference.
She was the PACWEST and CCAA Athlete of the Week for the week of Feb. 6 after her 40-point effort against VIU, a weekend where she also provided 10 rebounds, nine assists and four steals.
Jonsson-Ojala was also a Second-Team All-Star in 2022 after playing just half a season. With a full campaign in 2022-23, the 6-foot-2 import from Sweden upped her field-goal efficiency to 55.6 per cent and raised her scoring average to 12.7 points per game, good enough for fifth in the PACWEST. Jonsson-Ojala improved her assists per game to 2.3 and increased her free-throw percentate to 73.3.
She was the PACWEST and CCAA Athlete of the Week for the week of Jan. 23 after scoring 32 points and hauling down 22 rebounds in a pair of Blues wins at Camosun College.
Briggs, in her final college hoops season, registered her best season since transferring to CapU in 2020. The 5-foot-11 native of Redding, Calif. started all but one game for the Blues and was second only to Abo in minutes played. Briggs showed a lethal mid-range jumper this season and also displayed brilliant passing ability, recording the third-most assists and assists per game in the conference. The fifth-year communications student also led the Blues from the free throw line, shooting 84.4 percent from the stripe.
She was named the PACWEST and CCAA Athlete of the Week for the week of Nov. 28 after posting back-to-back double-doubles and helping the Blues upend then No. 1-ranked VIU.
Davignon showed well in her rookie season, playing over 20 minutes per game for the first-place Blues. She pulled down 65 rebounds and had 21 steals while handing out over an assist per game. She follows in the path of her older sister Alanya, the Blues veteran combo guard/forward who was also named to the PACWEST All-Rookie team for the 2019-20 season.
The Blues head into the PACWEST provincials as the No. 1-seed and have a bye into the semifinals which will be a 5:30 p.m. tipoff on Friday, March 3. They will face the winner of Thursday's quarter-final between No. 4 Douglas College and No. 5 Okanagan College.
