SPRINGFIELD, MASS. — The Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame introduced the Prime 10 candidates for the 2025 Bob Cousy Award and, in partnership with the Girls’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation (WBCA), the Prime 10 candidates for the 2025 Nancy Lieberman Award.
The annual Bob Cousy Award, named after the Class of 1971 Corridor of Famer and former Boston Celtic and Holy Cross guard, celebrates its twenty second 12 months by highlighting the highest level guard in Division I males’s faculty basketball.
Now in its twenty sixth 12 months, the Nancy Lieberman Award acknowledges the highest level guard in girls’s NCAA Division I faculty basketball. To be thought-about for this prestigious award, candidates should exhibit the ground management, playmaking, and ball-handling abilities of Class of 1996 Corridor-of-Famer Nancy Lieberman.
| 2025 Bob Cousy Award Candidates* | 2025 Nancy Lieberman Award Candidates* | ||
| Mark Sears | Alabama | Katie Dinnebier | Drake |
| Walter Clayton Jr. | Florida | Harmoni Turner | Harvard |
| Ryan Nembhard | Gonzaga | Serena Sundell | Kansas State |
| Keshon Gilbert | Iowa State | Georgia Amoore | Kentucky |
| Kam Jones | Marquette | Olivia Miles | Notre Dame |
| Ace Baldwin Jr. | Penn State | Te-Hina Paopao | South Carolina |
| Braden Smith | Purdue | Hailey Van Lith | TCU |
| Dylan Harper | Rutgers | Rori Harmon | Texas |
| Zakai Zeigler | Tennessee | Kiki Rice | UCLA |
| Javon Small | West Virginia | Paige Bueckers | UConn |
*Gamers can play their means onto and off the checklist at any level within the 2024-25 season.
Followers are inspired to take part in Fan Voting in each of the remaining rounds beginning on Friday, February 7, on hoophallawards.com. The Fan Vote will depend as one committee vote throughout the finalist choice course of.
In March, the Prime 10 checklist can be narrowed to only 5, and in late March, the 5 finalists can be offered to Cousy, Lieberman, and the Corridor of Fame’s choice committees, the place winners can be chosen. The Choice Committees for the Bob Cousy and Nancy Lieberman Awards are composed of high males’s and girls’s faculty basketball personnel, together with media members, head coaches, sports activities data administrators, and Corridor of Famers.
The winners of the 2025 Cousy and Lieberman Awards can be offered on a to-be-determined date, together with the 4 different members of the Males’s and Girls’s Beginning 5. Extra awards being offered embrace the Jerry West and Ann Meyers Drysdale Awards (Taking pictures Guard), Julius Erving and Cheryl Miller Awards (Small Ahead), Karl Malone and Katrina McClain Awards (Energy Ahead), and the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lisa Leslie Awards (Heart).
Earlier winners of the Bob Cousy Award embrace Tristen Newton, Connecticut (2024), Markquis Nowell, Kansas State (2023), Ayo Dosunmu, Illinois (2021), Ja Morant, Murray State (2019), Jalen Brunson, Villanova (2018), Trey Burke, Michigan (2013), Kendall Marshall, North Carolina (2012), Kemba Walker, Connecticut (2011), and Jameer Nelson, St. Joseph’s (2004).
Earlier winners of the Nancy Lieberman Award embrace Caitlin Clark, Iowa (2022-24), Paige Bueckers, UConn (2021), Sabrina Ionescu, Oregon (2018-20), Skylar Diggins, Notre Dame (2012-13), Diana Taurasi, Connecticut (2003-04), and Sue Chicken, Connecticut (2000-02).
For extra data on the 2025 Bob Cousy and Nancy Lieberman Awards and the newest updates, go to hoophallawards.com and observe @hoophallu, #CousyAward, and #LiebermanAward on X and Instagram.
In regards to the WBCA:
Based in 1981, the Girls’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation is the skilled affiliation for coaches of ladies’s and women’ basketball in any respect ranges of competitors. The WBCA affords academic sources that coaches want to assist make themselves higher leaders, academics and mentors to their gamers; supplies alternatives for coaches to attach with friends within the occupation; serves because the unifying voice of a various neighborhood of coaches to these organizations that management the sport; and celebrates these coaches, gamers and different people who excel annually and contribute to the development of the game. For extra data, go to us on-line: WBCA.org, observe @wbca1981, or name 1-770-279-8027.
In regards to the Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame:
Positioned in Springfield, Massachusetts, the town the place basketball was born, the Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame is an impartial non-profit 501(c)(3) group devoted to selling, preserving, and celebrating the sport of basketball at each degree—women and men, beginner {and professional} gamers, coaches, and contributors—each domestically and internationally. The Corridor of Fame museum is dwelling to greater than 475 inductees and over 40,000 sq. ft of basketball historical past. Almost 200,000 folks go to the Corridor of Fame museum annually to be taught concerning the sport, expertise the interactive displays, and take a look at their abilities on the Jerry Colangelo “Courtroom of Desires.” Finest identified for its annual marquee Enshrinement Ceremony honoring the sport’s elite, the Corridor of Fame additionally operates over 70 highschool and collegiate competitions yearly all through the nation and overseas. For extra data on the Basketball Corridor of Fame group, its museum, and occasions, go to hoophall.com and observe @hoophallU.
