After just four days, junior Larry Sanders is off to quite a start for the 2010 calendar year. His game-high 16 points on Saturday helped VCU to a 91-57 throttling of UNC Wilmington and now he has been named CAA Co-Player of the Week.

The 6-11 forward led the Rams in scoring in both victories this past week as the Rams improved to 9-2 overall and 1-1 in conference action.

To start the week, Sanders poured in a career-high 23 points on 9-of-17 shooting in VCU’s 82-74 victory over East Carolina on Tuesday night. Along with his offensive production, he corralled nine rebounds, blocked four shots and picked up two steals.

Sanders then led a stifling defensive effort by the Rams that suffocated a typically very aggressive Seahawk offense into 28 turnovers and just 28.6% shooting.

“I thought Larry’s defensive effort against UNC Wilmington was near perfect,” head coach Shaka Smart said. “Yes, he had five blocked shots, but I thought it was more his presence in the middle that disrupted their offense and really helped us create a lot of issues for them.”

Along with his defensive presence, Sanders finished with 16 points on 5-of-9 shooting, five blocked shots and two rebounds in just 19 minutes.

For the season, Sanders leads the team in scoring (14.9 ppg), rebounding (7.9 rpg) and field-goal percentage (52.2%). He sits in the top-10 in the CAA in each of those categories. His 3.0 blocks per game currently ranks 14th in the country. Sanders and his teammates will have a busy week ahead of them with home games against Northeastern (Jan. 4th) and Delaware (Jan. 9th), sandwiched around a road trip to Drexel (Jan. 6th).

– The information above was provided by Scott Day at VCU.