Kansas freshman Jaliya Davis made Big 12 Conference history on Tuesday by winning her seventh straight Big 12 Freshman of the Week honor.
She passed former Kansas State star Ayoka Lee, who won six straight Big 12 Freshman of the Week honors during her rookie season at K-State in 2019-20.
Davis, who has been among the best and most productive women’s basketball freshmen in the country throughout conference play, leads the Jayhawks in scoring at 21.6 points per game and also is the team’s second-leading rebounder at 6.1 per contest while shooting 63.6% from the floor.
Her points-per-game average is nearly a point higher in Big 12 play only, at 22.4 per outing, second only to Iowa State star Audi Crooks, who leads the conference in scoring at 23.4 points per game.
Here’s the funny thing about Davis’ latest weekly honor — it came during one of the least impressive stat weeks of the stretch and yet she still averaged 20 points per game in a close loss at Texas Tech and runaway win over Houston at home on Valentine’s Day.
R1S1 Sports caught up with Lee recently to talk about Davis and discuss what the weekly award did for her at the outset of her college career, which went on to include multiple first-team all-Big 12 seasons and a Big 12 Freshman of the Year award, which hangs in her office at K-State today.
“As a freshman, I think it’s really cool just to be recognized at the conference level,” Lee told R1S1 Sports in a recent phone interview. “I definitely remember just being really honored and really excited to see those honors multiple times throughout the season.”
She said she didn’t think too much about how many she had won or whether she would win another one simply because her focus was on that week’s games and scouting reports and doing her job to the best of her ability.
That said, she did occasionally hear about the obnoxious string of honors, from more than just her teammates and coaches each Monday she earned another one.
At the time, one of Lee’s best friends, Sydney Goodson, was playing at Texas Tech. And she reported the reaction from Lubbock to her close friend back in Manhattan, Kansas.
“I remember her saying they had a pretty good freshman and they would say almost every week, ‘Uggghhh. No way she won it again,’” Lee recalled. “It was kind of funny.”
It’s not hard to imagine similar conversations about Davis happening around the Big 12 today.
To put Davis' run even more in perspective, former Baylor star Brittney Griner won 7 Freshman of the Week honors total during the 2009-10 season, and Iowa legend Caitlin Clark saw her streak of consecutive Big Ten Freshman of the Week honors stop at six back in 2020-21.
When you consider that Davis, one of the highest-rated freshmen KU has ever recovered and a 2025 McDonald’s All-American, missed nine games because of injury during KU’s non-conference slate, the fact that Davis has returned to the lineup in this form while playing the hardest part of the Jayhawks’ schedule makes everything she has accomplished all the more impressive.
Even Lee agrees with that. And she lived it, with opponents paying more and more attention to her as her freshman season — and career — went on because of her success and honors.
“It kind of puts a target on your back and you know teams are going to make an adjustment,” Lee said. “But it was exciting to see, ‘What can we do and how can I help us even when that’s happening?’ It definitely built excitement and even motivation.”
It hasn’t been all roses and rebounds for Davis this season. She’s had rough games, rough stretches, rough quarters and times where it was difficult to adjust to the college game. But she’s so skilled, so driven and so determined to find a way to succeed that things have, at times, looked easy for her.
Lee said she experienced a similar ride during her freshman season, which included her recording 19 double-doubles in 29 games.
Just as has happened from time to time with Davis, there were games, Lee said, when she didn’t feel like she played great only to see pretty good numbers when she looked at her final stat line.
On nights when she didn’t “have it” on offense, she said her coaches did a good job of encouraging her to make plays outside of just scoring. Go get some rebounds of play good D, was the way she described the directives on those nights.
“That really helped me learn that you can still have an impact on the game even if it doesn’t feel like you are,” she said. “So, really, just to not always trust your feelings. It definitely built my confidence, but it also just taught me that I do have an impact, I can have an impact and that I can use that to help my team. It’s cool to look back now and see that I did leave a legacy and make an impact.”
Lee said she doesn’t remember how things went that fateful seventh week when her streak of consecutive Big 12 Freshman of the Week honors finally ended.
What’s more, she’s rooting for Davis to add to her own streak.
“I want her to get the 7th and 8th and however many more she can get,” Lee said. “I would tell her just to go for it. You know what you’re doing, just keep working hard and don’t question it.”
With just three regular season games — over two weeks — remaining for the 2025-26 Jayhawks, the highest Davis could stretch her streak is 9 in a row.
That would still leave her a few behind Lee, who was a 12-time Big 12 Freshman of the Week honoree back in her day.
Not that either of them is thinking about the other or that Lee was thinking much about her own streak during that 2019-20 season.
“I don’t know how much it mattered,” Lee said. “But it was always such an honor and it was cool knowing those awards go into the Freshman of the Year awards and stuff like that. It was always just like, this is an opportunity to continue to do well.”
She added: “While I was playing, I don’t think I took a lot of time to let everything sink in. You just kind of keep chugging along.”
No one illustrates that quite as well as Davis with the Jayhawks — each possession, each point, each game, each day and each award.
Next up, Davis and the Jayhawks will travel to Manhattan, Kansas on Saturday for a rematch with Kansas State. In the first meeting, Davis scored 22 points on 8 shots and grabbed 8 rebounds in 28 minutes.
After that, the Jayhawks (16-11 overall, 6-9 in Big 12 play) enter a huge final week, with a home game vs. No. 20 Texas Tech on Feb. 25 and a road game at Oklahoma State on Feb. 28, the final Saturday of the regular season.
Then it’s the Big 12 tournament in Kansas City, March 4-8.
— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com
