NAISMITH BASKETBALL HALL OF FAME ANNOUNCES PRESEASON WATCH LIST FOR THE 2026 MEN’S AND WOMEN’S POINT GUARD OF THE YEAR AWARDS

– Fan Voting Begins Friday, October 31 –

SPRINGFIELD, MASS. — The Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame introduced the 20 watch-list candidates for the 2026 Bob Cousy Award and, in partnership with the Ladies’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation (WBCA), the 20 watch-list candidates for the 2026 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 third 12 months by highlighting the highest level guard in Division I males’s faculty basketball. 

Now in its twenty seventh 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. 

*Gamers can play their approach onto and off the record at any level within the 2025-26 season.

Followers are inspired to take part in Fan Voting in every of the three rounds beginning on Friday, October 31. In late January, the watch record of 20 gamers for the 2026 Bob Cousy and Nancy Lieberman Awards shall be narrowed to 10, after which in late February, to simply 5. In March, the 5 finalists shall be introduced to Cousy, Lieberman, and the Corridor of Fame’s choice committees, the place winners shall be chosen. The Choice Committees for the Bob Cousy and Nancy Lieberman Awards are composed of prime males’s and ladies’s faculty basketball personnel, together with media members, head coaches, sports activities info administrators, and Corridor of Famers. 

The winners of the 2026 Cousy and Lieberman Awards shall be introduced on a to-be-determined date, together with the 4 different members of the Males’s and Ladies’s Beginning 5. Extra awards being introduced embrace the Jerry West and Ann Meyers Drysdale Awards (Capturing 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 Braden Smith, Purdue (2025), 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 and ‘25), Sabrina Ionescu, Oregon (2018-20), Skylar Diggins, Notre Dame (2012-13), Diana Taurasi, Connecticut (2003-04), and Sue Chicken, Connecticut (2000-02).

For extra info on the 2026 Bob Cousy and Nancy Lieberman Awards and the newest updates, go to hoophallawards.com and comply with @hoophallu, #CousyAward, and #LiebermanAward on X and Instagram.

Concerning the WBCA: 

Based in 1981, the Ladies’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation is the skilled affiliation for coaches of ladies’s and ladies’ basketball in any respect ranges of competitors. The WBCA affords instructional sources that coaches want to assist make themselves higher leaders, lecturers and mentors to their gamers; offers alternatives for coaches to attach with friends within the occupation; serves because the unifying voice of a various group 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 info, go to us on-line: WBCA.org, comply with @wbca1981,or name 1-770-279-8027.

Concerning 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 unbiased nonprofit 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 residence to greater than 475 inductees and over 40,000 sq. toes of basketball historical past. Almost 200,000 individuals go to the Corridor of Fame museum annually to be taught concerning the recreation, expertise the interactive reveals, and check 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 150 highschool and collegiate competitions yearly all through the nation and overseas. For extra info on the Basketball Corridor of Fame group, its museum, and occasions, go to hoophall.com and comply with @hoophallu.