Pac-10 honors Westerberg, January

Two former Great Spokane League standouts playing for Arizona State’s women’s basketball team were honored by the Pacific-10 Conference on Wednesday.

Junior Emily Westerberg (Central Valley) was named to the All-Pac-10 team for the second straight year and Briann January (Lewis and Clark) made the All-Freshman team.

Sophomore Candice Wiggins of Stanford joined elite company by repeating as the Player of the Year. She is the sixth player to win the award twice and fifth to do it in back-to-back years.

California’s Alexis Gray-Lawson is the Freshman of the Year and Stanford’s Tara Vanderveer is the Coach of the Year for the eighth time.

Washington State junior Kate Benz earned honorable mention and teammate Amanda DuRocher made the freshman team.

Westerberg averaged 10.2 points a game for the Sun Devils. She is second on the team in assists (70) and steals (33).

January didn’t start for ASU but twice led the team in scoring. Her 71 assists tied sophomore Regan Pariseau, another CV grad, for the team lead. She also had a team-high 42 steals.

Benz led the Pac-10 in rebounding for the second straight year at 9.2 and is the first Cougar to lead the Pac-10. Her 689 career rebounds are fourth all-time.

The Cougars (8-19) open the Pac-10 Tournament tonight in San Jose, Calif., against Oregon State (14-13). If they win, they will face 11th-ranked ASU (23-5) on Saturday afternoon.

•Eastern Washington clinched the sixth and final seed to the Big Sky Conference Tournament with a 67-57 win over Northern Arizona in Cheney.

Three bench players ignited the Eagles’ (12-14, 6-7) offense after NAU jumped to a 9-0 lead to start the game. Julie Page and Joanna Chadd scored 14 apiece, and Ashley Knight chipped in 10 for EWU. Nickey Eason scored 16 for the Lumberjacks (18-10, 8-5).

The Eagles extended their streak of consecutive berths to the conference tournament to six seasons and improved their home record to 9-2.