Week 12 Big 12 Football Players of the Week Announced
With Week 12 of the college football season officially in the books, the Big 12 Conference announced four players that would be taking home the 12th iteration of the Big 12 Football Weekly Awards for the 2023 season.
TCU tight end Jared Wiley claimed the title of Offensive Player of the Week in Week 12 while Oklahoma’s Billy Bowman took home Defensive Player of the Week honors. West Virginia’s Jaheim White earned his first Newcomer of the Week award and Kansas State DB Keenan Garber won the title of Big 12 Special Teams Player of the Week.
Wiley became the Big 12’s Offensive Player of the Week with a monster performance in TCU’s 42-17 win over Baylor on Saturday afternoon. The senior tight end brought in seven catches for 178 yards and two scores on the day which set a new TCU tight end record in receiving yards. Wiley paired the record with career-highs in both catches and touchdowns with seven grabs and two trips to the end zone.
Oklahoma defensive back Billy Bowman was all over the field on Saturday, recording a multitude of stats. Bowman recorded nine tackles in Saturday’s game but made headlines with the play of the day jumping a goal-line pass and intercepting it, taking it back 100-yards for an Oklahoma score. Bowman’s pick became the third 100-yard interception return in program history as well as the first occurrence since the 2014 season, according to the official release.
West Virginia‘s offense was about as close to unstoppable as possible on Saturday against Cincinnati with the Mountaineers recording an absurd 424 yards on the ground against the Bearcats. Freshman running back Jaheim White accounted for the bulk of the yards recording 21 carries for 207 yards and two total touchdowns on the day. White added a 75-yard touchdown catch in the game which solidified the already impressive performance from Neal Brown and company.
The final weekly award winner is Kansas State defensive back Keenan Garber who made some major plays against Kansas in the Sunflower Showdown. Garber returned a blocked PAT attempt 91 yards for a two-point conversion for the Wildcats which became Garber’s second time finding the end zone in the past two weeks. The former wide receiver turned DB made headlines in his hometown of Lawrence Kansas with the longest defensive extra point return in school history, one yard longer than Terence Newman’s 90-yard return against USC in 2002. Garber’s return became the longest overall return in college football since Chris Canty’s 98-yard interception return against Oklahoma back in 1994.
Last Week’s Winners:
Offense: Dillon Gabriel, OU, QB, Sr.
Defense: Demari Henderson, UCF, DB, So.
Newcomer: Abu Sama III, ISU, RB, Fr.
Special Teams: Gino Garcia, TTU, PK, Sr.
