NAISMITH BASKETBALL HALL OF FAME ANNOUNCES FIVE FINALISTS FOR THE 2025 MEN’S AND WOMEN’S SHOOTING GUARD OF THE YEAR AWARDS

– Fan Voting Begins Friday, March 7 –

SPRINGFIELD, MASS. — The Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame introduced the 5 finalists for the 2025 Jerry West Award and, in partnership with the Girls’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation (WBCA), the 5 finalists for the 2025 Ann Meyers Drysdale Award.

The annual Jerry West Award, named after the late Class of 1980 Corridor of Famer and 1959 NCAA Last 4 Most Beneficial Participant, celebrates its eleventh yr by highlighting the highest taking pictures guards in Division I males’s school basketball. 

The Ann Meyers Drysdale Award, in its eighth yr, honors the highest taking pictures guard in girls’s NCAA Division I school basketball. It’s named after the Class of 1993 Corridor of Famer, the primary participant, no matter gender, to be chosen for an All-America Crew in 4 consecutive school seasons.

Followers are inspired to take part in Fan Voting beginning on Friday, March 7, on hoophallawards.com. The Fan Vote will rely as one committee vote in the course of the finalist choice course of.

Later this month, the finalists will probably be introduced to West and Meyers Drysdale and the Corridor of Fame’s choice committees. The Choice Committees for the Jerry West and Ann Meyers Drysdale Awards are composed of high males’s and girls’s school basketball personnel, together with media members, head coaches, sports activities data administrators, and Corridor of Famers.

The winners of the 2025 West and Meyers Drysdale Awards will probably be introduced on a to-be-determined date, together with the opposite 4 members of the Males’s and Girls’s Beginning 5. Further awards being introduced embrace the Bob Cousy and Nancy Lieberman Awards (Level 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 (Middle). 

Earlier winners of the Jerry West Award are RJ Davis, North Carolina (2024), Marcus Sasser, Houston (2023), Johnny Davis, Wisconsin (2022), Chris Duarte, Oregon (2021), Myles Powell, Seton Corridor (2020), RJ Barrett, Duke (2019), Carsen Edwards, Purdue (2018), Malik Monk, Kentucky (2017), Buddy Hield, Oklahoma (2016), and D’Angelo Russell, Ohio State (2015).

Earlier winners of the Ann Meyers Drysdale Award are JuJu Watkins, USC (2024), Zia Cooke, South Carolina (2023), Christyn Williams, UConn (2022), Ashley Owusu, Maryland (2021), Aari McDonald, Arizona (2020), Asia Durr, Louisville (2019), and Victoria Vivians, Mississippi State (2018).

For extra data on the 2025 Jerry West and Ann Meyers Drysdale Awards and the newest updates, go to hoophallawards.com and observe @hoophallu, #WestAward, and #MeyersDrysdaleAward on X and Instagram.

Concerning the WBCA: 

Based in 1981, the Girls’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation is the skilled affiliation for coaches of girls’s and women’ basketball in any respect ranges of competitors. The WBCA provides academic sources that coaches want to assist make themselves higher leaders, lecturers and mentors to their gamers; gives 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.

Concerning the Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame: 

Situated 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 house to greater than 475 inductees and over 40,000 sq. ft of basketball historical past. Practically 200,000 individuals go to the Corridor of Fame museum annually to be taught in regards to the recreation, expertise the interactive reveals, and take a look at their abilities on the Jerry Colangelo “Court docket 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.