Editor's note: Charlie Creme, Graham Hays and Mechelle Voepel each vote to determine espnW's national player of the week, which is awarded every week of the women's college basketball season.
What was projected as a relatively quiet week with several teams still taking finals instead produced several electrifying individual performances. It wasn't easy to narrow it to one for our espnW player of the week honors. But ultimately freshman Chennedy Carter's school-record scoring tour-de-force for Texas A&M was too dazzling to deny.
Carter wants to be a do-it-all point guard, and in Friday's 75-74 victory at Southern Cal, she had 46 points, four rebounds, six assists and three steals. The 5-foot-7 guard hit the winning shot with 10.9 seconds left, finishing 17 of 28 from the field and eight of nine from the foul line.
Coach Gary Blair has had some talented scoring guards in his long career. But through just 11 games as a collegian, Carter's start suggests she might end up as one of the best.
She's averaging 21.0 points and 5.0 assists for the No. 19 Aggies, who are 9-2. Carter has shot 47.2 percent from the field (41.9 from behind the arc), and is at 85.2 percent from the line. For a guard as quick and adept at getting to the basket as she is, that free throw percentage is especially notable. Defenses beware: Carter can make a living off the line.
Some people might still be mispronouncing Carter's first name -- it's "Kennedy" -- but they won't for long. Carter has scored in double figures every game thus far for Texas A&M. Before she torched the Trojans, her high was 30 against Texas Tech. That's the alma mater of one of Carter's cousins, WNBA player Jia Perkins, who won a championship with the Minnesota Lynx this past season.
Danielle Adams -- who scored 40 points against Kansas on Feb. 12, 2011 -- held the previous single-game scoring record at Texas A&M. Adams was a senior then, and she set the school record for most points in a season (847) that year, too. Adams played her first two years at junior college, or else she'd likely be the Aggies' all-time leading scorer. Instead, that's Courtney Walker (1,989), who finished her career in 2016.
It's too early to say how much Carter might end up in the Texas A&M record book, but she's at least got one mark there already. The Aggies play in the Duel in the Desert this week in Las Vegas, facing Hawaii on Wednesday and No. 9 Oregon, featuring triple-double machine Sabrina Ionescu, on Thursday.
Ionescu got her third triple-double of the season -- and seventh of her career, tying the NCAA all-time record shared by Penn State's Suzie McConnell (1985-88) and Saint Mary's Louella Tomlinson (2008-11) -- on Sunday. A meeting of the sophomore Ionescu and the freshman Carter should be very interesting.
Also nominated: Paris Kea, North Carolina; Kitija Laksa, South Florida; Brooke McCarty, Texas; Teaira McCowan, Mississippi State; Sabrina Ionescu, Oregon; Jessica Shepard, Notre Dame
Previous winners: Louisville's Durr (Nov. 20) | Ohio State's Mitchell (Nov. 27) | Florida State's Thomas (Dec. 4) | Oklahoma State's Goodwin (Dec. 11)