3 Ducks, Ari McDonald and Aliyah Boston are the HoopHall Hall of Fame Award Winners

[Flyinsouth]

Sabrina Ionescu won her 3rd straight Nancy Lieberman Point Guard of the Year award
Aari McDonald won her first Ann Meyers Drysdale Award - Shooting Guard
Satou Sabally won her first Cheryl Miller Award - Small Forward
Ruthy Hebard won her second Katrina McClain Award - Power Forward
Aliyah Boston as a frosh won the Lisa Leslie Award - Center

Congratulation ladies, Oregon was stacked with talent!

Hoop Hall Awards

 

[domerduck]

Sabrina Ionescu won her 3rd straight Nancy Lieberman Point Guard of the Year award
Aari McDonald won her first Ann Meyers Drysdale Award - Shooting Guard
Satou Sabally won her first Cheryl Miller Award - Small Forward
Ruthy Hebard won her second Katrina McClain Award - Power Forward
Aliyah Boston as a frosh won the Lisa Leslie Award - Center

Congratulation ladies, Oregon was stacked with talent!

Hoop Hall Awards

Just saw it on Sportscenter/ Awesome

 

[domerduck]

UConn & Oregon have dominated these awards
All time for these 5 position awards:
10 from UConn (Bird-3, Taurasi-2, Jefferson-2, Montgomery, Williams, Collier)
6 from Oregon (Ionescu-3, Hebard-2, Sabally)
2 from South Carolina (Wilson, Boston)
2 from Notre Dame (Diggins-2)
1 from each of the following 12 schools:
LSU (Johnson), UNC (Latta), Duke (Harding), OkSt (Riley), Gonzaga (Vandersloot), Baylor (Sims), Washington (Plum), Miss St (Vivians), L'ville (Durr), ISU (Carleton), Iowa (Gustafson), & Arizona (McDonald)

UConn & Oregon were also the only schools that had 3 players in the final 5 for the awards this year..

 

[domerduck]

All five players are well deserve honors recipients, though I personally find it interesting that Boston got the Center award and Hebard the Power Forward, because of the two, Boston has the more versatile power forward game. I guess they just went by height...!?

McDonald could have been a point guard but got nominated for the shooting guard I think because they knew she had a better chance to win. Hebard won the Power Forward in 2018, Collier last year, and Ruthy won again this year. She clearly was the Ducks center this year, but they kept her in the category where she won in 2018 when a taller McGwire was the "center". Boston was clearly SC's center. She was up against 4 other centers (Nelson-Ododa, Montpromier, Cunane, & Brewer. I agree Boston plays like a power forward as does Hebard.

 

[Plebe]

All five players are well deserve honors recipients, though I personally find it interesting that Boston got the Center award and Hebard the Power Forward, because of the two, Boston has the more versatile power forward game. I guess they just went by height...!?

Many of their classifications are dubious or worse. Aari McDonald as a shooting guard? It doesn't inspire much confidence in the decision-makers.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

Many of their classifications are dubious or worse. Aari McDonald as a shooting guard? It doesn't inspire much confidence in the decision-makers.

Its complicated, though, because Arizona had a great deal of diversity in who was bringing the ball up, the duty often devolved on Sam Thomas, Amari Carter, even Cate Reese less often.

And once in the half court, it wasn't particularly apparent who the point guard necessarily was. The closest to a true point guard was Lucia Alonso, who's minutes decreased this season (although she was a valuable team member). At one point it looked like they would have liked Bryce Nixon to become a future point guard but she didn't really have the physical development. I also think (based on OOC games) that Mara Mote might be groomed in that general direction.

The diversity in play was probably a strength this season. As Adia said, it wasn't that she wanted to depend on Aari as much as the team did, but at times she was the only one who truly stepped up (shades of Vivian / Cappie there). In any case, she was very blunt that the less Aari scored with Arizona winning the better the team was.

 

[willtalk]

Poor Ari McDonald played in the same general area that Sabrina did. She and a lot of other really good guards got overshadowed and because of that, she missed out on being picked for any high school All-Star Games. As it turned out she certainly should have been picked. In her freshman year, she played behind Plum. Well, she finally is getting some recognition.

 

[bballnut90]

So how does the Dawn Staley award factor into all of this? Too many awards floating around these days IMO. Call me a traditionalist, but I think POY, COY, FOY, and AA honors is plenty for post season honors. Position specific awards doesn't mean a whole lot IMO since so many of these players play in multiple spots depending on who is in the lineup.

And as noted by @TheFarmFan, Hebard was exclusively a center this year even if she'll be a PF at the next level. In previous years, Victoria Vivians was clearly a forward, not a shooting guard despite winning the SG award, Sims was clearly a SG and not a PG as a senior, etc.

 

[domerduck]

T

So how does the Dawn Staley award factor into all of this? Too many awards floating around these days IMO. Call me a traditionalist, but I think POY, COY, FOY, and AA honors is plenty for post season honors. Position specific awards doesn't mean a whole lot IMO since so many of these players play in multiple spots depending on who is in the lineup.

And as noted by @TheFarmFan, Hebard was exclusively a center this year even if she'll be a PF at the next level. In previous years, Victoria Vivians was clearly a forward, not a shooting guard despite winning the SG award, Sims was clearly a SG and not a PG as a senior, etc.

The position awards were set up by Naismith to create some equity and coordination across men and women bball. Historically position awards started with Sue Bird winning the Lieberman PG award in 2000 which Sabrina mathced her to win 3 times. The men followed suit with the Cousy PG Award which was 1st given out in 2005. This year it was won by Oregon PG, Payton Pritchard. Then in 2015 the men added 4 position awards: Jerry West SG, Julius Erving SF, Karl Malone PF, & Kareem Abdul-Jabbar C. It seems like it was named more for top pro athletes, since Jabbar's name was Lou Alcindor when he played college. They started given the women's position award covered in this thread three years ago.

I think it's a good move. It keeps the "one-off" awards like the Dawn Staley Award in their place and we understand those biases in how they are given out. Naismith actually eliminated the Frances Pomeroy award for short bball players in 2014 which was sort of silly (Kim Mulkey won that in 1984). There are more POY awards than position awards and AA awards seem to be inconsistent since the WBCA gives out 10 and AP 5 on 1st team with three teams, etc.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

So how does the Dawn Staley award factor into all of this? Too many awards floating around these days IMO. Call me a traditionalist, but I think POY, COY, FOY, and AA honors is plenty for post season honors. Position specific awards doesn't mean a whole lot IMO since so many of these players play in multiple spots depending on who is in the lineup.

And as noted by @TheFarmFan, Hebard was exclusively a center this year even if she'll be a PF at the next level. In previous years, Victoria Vivians was clearly a forward, not a shooting guard despite winning the SG award, Sims was clearly a SG and not a PG as a senior, etc.

I agree to many awards, but the reason seems to be the many different organizations offering them.

The Dawn Staley Award is by the Phoenix Club of Philadelphia, which specifically exists (apparently) to honor men's and women's players. The women's award was named after Dawn for the obvious reason.

The group in this thread are from the Naismith National Basketball Hall of Fame, they have a men's set (of course) as well; I don't remember all the names off the top of my head, but one is named the Karl Malone award.

The Naismith Awards are presented by the Atlanta Tipoff Club; the Wade and others are from the WBCA and you have Associated Press and who knows how many others.