Packard earns Great West & CBI West Region Player of the Week

RELATED CLICKS:
Great West Release | College Baseball Insider Release

NAPERVILLE, Ill. -- Northern Colorado's Ben Packard has been named Great West Conference Player of the Week, becoming the third Bear this season to be honored. The awards were announced Tuesday by the conference office. 

On Wednesday, he was also named the College Baseball Insider West Region Player of the Week, the first Bear to earn the honor since returning to Division I.

Packard, a junior from Niwot, Colo., had a monster week for the Bears with .750 batting average with a 1.500 slugging percentage while knocking in 15 runs with 12 runs scored in a four-game sweep of conference foe North Dakota. He had four multi-hit games against the Sioux, with at least two hits and two RBI in each game.

On Friday, he doubled his previous career-high in RBI with six, missing just the double from the cycle. On Sunday, he hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth to give the Bears a 14-13 win after they trailed 9-2 midway through the seventh.

NJIT's DJ Roche was named the league's Pitcher of the Week, while Adam Plutko, a freshman from UCLA won the West Region Pitcher of the Week from CBI.

Packard joins Jarod Berggren and Joe Sawicki on the weekly awards list for 2011 and this is the first career award for Packard.