Finalists for the Bragan Award includes brother of Texas Rangers’ Josh Jung
Texas Tech standout Jace Jung is hoping to join his brother Josh as a winner of the prestigious Bobby Bragan Collegiate Slugger Award.
Josh Jung won the Fort Worth-based Bragan Award in 2019 following a standout season at Texas Tech and then went on to become the first-round draft pick by the Texas Rangers that summer.
Jace is a finalist for the same award two years later after his own standout season at Tech. Along with Jace Jung, the other finalists are Arizona’s Jacob Berry, Oklahoma’s Tyler Hardman and East Carolina’s Connor Norby.
“This is our first full year as a national award and the response from the D1 programs was tremendous,” said Tracy Taylor, executive director of the Bragan Award. “The selection committee reviewed every at-bat of the 58 players on the nationwide watch list and did an outstanding job of identifying the student-athletes that best represent the criteria of the slugger award.”
The winner will be announced later this month and honored at a gala in the fall.
Jace was the Big 12’s player of the year as a freshman and is among the nation’s leaders in home runs and RBIs. Jace and the Red Raiders have reached the super regionals of the NCAA Tournament where they’ll host Stanford in a best-of-three series starting Friday in Lubbock.
Berry was All-Pac 12 and in the top 10 in the country in RBI while hitting .364 with 15 home runs during the regular season. OU’s Hardman was All-Big 12 and among the top four hitters in the nation with a .397 batting average during the regular season. And Norby of East Carolina was the American Athletic Conference player of the year and led the country in hits during the regular season.
The Bragan Award, created by the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation, became a national award in 2020. It’s based on performance at the plate, academics and personal integrity.
The award started in 2017 as an honor going to the top college hitter in Texas, with Texas Tech’s Hunter Hargrove and Dallas Baptist’s Devlin Granberg being the first two recipients. Josh Jung won it in 2019. Nobody won it in 2020 as the college baseball season was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This story was originally published June 8, 2021 at 11:32 AM.
