BYU first baseman Ezra McNaughton and relief pitcher Ashton Johnson were named to the All-Big 12 Second Team on May 19, as selected by the conference head coaches.
Johnson was also recognized as the Big 12 Scholar Athlete of the Year. This award honors a student-athlete for outstanding performance both on the field and in academic pursuits.
A senior from Holladay, Johnson has played in 46 games over two seasons at BYU, compiling a record of six wins and five losses with seven saves. He has pitched a total of 94 innings, achieving an earned run average (ERA) of 3.73 with 74 strikeouts. In the current season, he appeared in 22 games and finished tied for third in the Big 12 for games finished (14), while ranking eighth in saves (five).
Off the field, Johnson is pursuing a degree in neuroscience with a cumulative GPA of 3.80. He was previously named CSC Academic All-District and received the Big 12 Gerald Lage Award for excellence both athletically and academically last year. Earlier this month, Johnson was included in the Starting Nine for the Tony Gwynn Community Service Trophy’s class of finalists for his involvement with organizations such as KIND Fund, Mac’s Gift Children’s Cancer Foundation, Sole Hope, and Jae Foundation.
McNaughton, a sophomore from Mesa, Arizona, started all 52 regular season games for BYU while hitting .342. He led his team in several offensive categories including hits (76), doubles (16), home runs (15), runs batted in (51), total bases (137), and slugging percentage (.617). Within conference play he ranked among the top ten players in hits, doubles, total bases and home runs. Defensively he recorded over two hundred putouts along with seven assists across twenty-two double plays during regular season competition.
BYU will next compete as No.9 seed against No.12 seed Texas Tech at Surprise Stadium on Tuesday evening during game one of this year’s Big 12 Baseball Championship tournament.
