Jan. 12, 2009

• Patriot League Release (Jan. 12, 2009)
• Navy-Bucknell Photo Gallery (Jan. 10, 2009)

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Navy men's basketball player Kaleo Kina has been voted the Anaconda® Patriot League Player of the Week, the league office announced on Monday. It marks the fourth time this year that Kina has been selected as the league's Player of the Week.

Kina, a 6-4 senior guard from Phoenix, Ariz., becomes just the seventh player in league history to win four Player of the Week accolades, tying the league record set by Bucknell's Patrick King (1991-92), Navy's Michael Heary (1996-97), Lehigh's Brett Eppeheimer (1997-98), Lafayette's Brian Ehlers (1998-99), Holy Cross' Keith Simmons (2006-07) and Army's Jarell Brown (2007-08). Navy becomes the first school to have two four-time winners (Heary and Kina) in a single season.

Kina led the Mids to a pair of victories last week, including Navy's first league-opening win since the 2000-01 season. In last Monday's 66-62 victory over Elon, Kina scored 13 points, added two rebounds, an assist and a steal in 26 minutes of action. Trailing 58-54 with just over three minutes left, Kina scored four points in a row to tie the game at 58, setting up Navy for its comeback victory.

Then in Saturday's league-opening 71-67 victory over Bucknell, Kina scored 25 points, his eighth 20-point game of the season, while adding four assists, a block and a steal. He scored six points in the final three minutes, including a huge three-pointer that pushed the Navy lead from 58-56 to 61-56 with 2:27 to play. His free throw with five seconds left to play sealed Navy's four-point triumph.

For the season, Kina leads the league, and is 33rd nationally, in scoring at 19.6 ppg. He also ranks eighth in the league in rebounding (5.5 rpg), ninth in steals per game (1.19 spg) and 10th in assists per game (3.00 apg). He has scored in double-figures in 19 consecutive games, dating back to last year.

For his career, Kina has scored 1,300 points to rank 13th on the Navy career scoring list. He has added 392 career rebounds, 327 assists and 161 steals. He needs just eight rebounds to become one of three players in league history (Lafayette's Brian Ehlers and Holy Cross' Kevin Hamilton) to record 1,300 career points, 400 rebounds, 300 assists and 150 steals. In addition, he needs just 88 points to become the third player in school history (Rob Romaine and Greg Sprink) to rank in the top 10 of career scoring and assists.

Coupled with his three previous awards on Dec. 1, 8 and 15, and Chris Harris' award on Dec. 29, a Navy player has now won the Patriot League Player of the Week accolade in five of the last seven weeks. The league has handed out just nine weekly awards so far this year.

Navy will be back in action on Wednesday night, when it travels to Lehigh for a 7:00 pm tip-off in Stabler Arena. The Midshipmen and Mountain Hawks are the only teams in the Patriot League to have recorded double-digit victories as Navy is 12-4 overall (1-0 PL) and Lehigh is 10-5 (0-1 PL). For ticket information, call 610-7LU-GAME.

# GO NAVY #