INDIANAPOLIS (USBWA) – With a week ahead featuring two top 10 women’s showdowns in Los Angeles on Saturday and Sunday – No. 6 Notre Dame at No. 3 USC followed by No. 1 South Carolina at No. 5 UCLA – and Hall of Fame Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma poised to become the all-time Division I leader Wednesday night for men’s or women’s victories – it may seem difficult looking back at the accomplishments of the past seven days.
Nevertheless, program records and history were noteworthy to feed into the action completed the past week, helping to decide and hand out the new set of women’s awards from the U.S. Basketball Writers Association.
The USBWA women’s awards, organized under Mel Greenberg, the USBWA Vice President for women’s basketball, are drawn from weekly conference honors as well as at-large additions. Nominations are welcome as each seven-day period rolls along to make sure no one is inadvertently overlooked.
There is no restriction within a week on the number of national honors received within a conference, especially the way realignment has affected membership size.
For the period through Sunday, Nov. 17, the five Ann Meyers Drysdale national women’s honorees of the week are Connecticut guard Paige Bueckers, Miami guard Haley Cavinder, Tennessee guard Talaysia Cooper, UTSA forward Jordyn Jenkins, and Harvard guard Harmoni Turner.
The Tamika Catchings National Freshman of the Week is Notre Dame forward Kate Koval and TCU is the National Team of the Week.
Bueckers, a 6-0 redshirt senior guard from Hopkins, Minn., is no stranger to USBWA season and weekly awards. In 2021, she became the first freshman to win the Ann Meyers Drysdale National Player Award and she shared rookie national honors with Iowa’s Caitlin Clark. Injuries caused her to miss part of the 2022 and all of the 2023 seasons, but her return in 2024 saw her named to the USBWA All-America first team. She was named Big East Player of the Week Monday after scoring 29 points, four connections from deep, in addition to four assists and a pair of steals leading the Huskies (3-0) to a 69-58 victory over then-No. 14 North Carolina at a neutral site in Greensboro.
That triumph brought the 70-year-old Auriemma to a tie with retired Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer (last April) at 1,216 victories, above the 1,129 total when Duke men’s coach Mike Krzyzewski retired in 2022. UConn is a strong favorite hosting Fairleigh Dickinson of the Northeast Conference Wednesday night in Storrs. The USBWA women’s board voted last spring that upon his unknown retirement their annual women’s coach of the year will bear his name.
Cavinder, a 5-6 graduate guard from Gilbert, Ariz., whose career began at Fresno State with her twin sister Hanna, had 31 points, shooting 58.2 percent (13-23) from the field and 41.2 percent from beyond the arc with six rebounds, five assists and two steals leading the 3-0 Hurricanes to an 83-73 victory in an in-state meeting at Florida (3-1). Earlier she scored 12 in a narrow 74-71 win at home over Jacksonville. At Fresno State in 2022 she was Mountain West Player of the Year. The twins became seniors in 2023, when she was named to the All-ACC second team, but after not playing last season, they returned to Miami under new coach Tricia Cullop from Toledo for the extra eligibility available through the NCAA Covid legislation.
Cooper, a 6-0 redshirt sophomore guard from Tuberville, S.C., averaged 25.5 points, 9.5 rebounds, 4.0 assists, and 3.0 steals in home wins in Knoxville for the Lady Vols (5-0) in beating Middle Tennessee and Liberty, the top two picks in CUSA. In the 89-75 win over the Blue Raiders, she had her first collegiate double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds. She ended the week with an explosive 33 points in a 109-93 win over Liberty, while grabbing nine boards, shooting 12-20 for 60 percent from the field and a perfect 7-7 at the line. Her 19.0 scoring average leads the team with 7.0 rebounds, 4.0 assists, and 3.8 steals. She transferred after the 2023 season from Dawn Staley’s powerhouse at South Carolina, but it was after the portal window closed making her ineligible last season.
Jenkins, a 6-0 senior forward from Renton, Wash., who was named American Athletic Conference Player of the Week on Monday, scored 28 of her 30 points in the second half, leading UTSA (3-1) to a 78-73 win at UTEP after trailing by 11 at the break. She was 10-13 from the field and 10-12 from the line and had 12 rebounds. In a 75-61 win over New Mexico State, she scored 27 points, shooting 9-14 from the field and a perfect 8-8 at the line and had a double double average on the week with 28.5 points and 11.5 rebounds.
Turner, a 5-10 senior guard from Mansfield, Texas, had quite the week for the Crimson (4-1) setting a program-record with 41 points in a 78-70 win at home over Boston College and then encored with 38 in an 83-41 win at America East favorite Maine for a two-game total of 79 points, earning her on Monday her 11th Ivy player of the week honor. Those scores are the two highest for any Division I player this season. In the earlier, record-setting performance, she was 14-23 from the field, 7-11 from deep, and grabbed 19 rebounds. Against Maine, she shot 12-24 from the field and was 11-11 from the line. She was a USBWA weekly winner last season. During opening week, she led Harvard to an upset at then-No. 25 Indiana of the Big Ten, scoring 24 to claim two wins over Power Four programs.
Koval, a 6-5 freshman forward from Kyiv, Ukraine, earned Atlantic Coast Conference co-rookie honors Monday after a week in which her first double-double for the Irish (4-0) came in a win over Sun Belt favorite James Madison, with 14 points, 16 rebounds, and six blocks. She was even better Sunday in a 91-55 win at Lafayette, her team setting a program-record 15 from deep, while she had 11 points, 19 rebounds, a Notre Dame freshman record and the seventh-best Irish rebounding performance overall. She also had seven blocks, the team’s most in seven seasons. Her two-game total adds to 25 points, 35 rebounds, and 13 blocks.
Mark Campbell, who helped Oregon’s rise as an assistant landing the likes of Sabrina Ionescu of the WNBA champion New York Liberty prior to her move to the pros, appears to be beginning to get a revival at TCU, the USBWA National Team of the Week.
On Sunday the Horned Frogs (4-0) upset then-No. 13 NC State 76-73 for the team’s first ranked win in three seasons, and over a top 15 in six, earning votes from a national media panel to return to the AP ranking at 19th, matching an earlier high in 2008.
TCU had lost 24 straight games to AP ranked opponents. In an AP interview introducing this week’s results, Campbell mentioned he took over a program that was at the bottom of the Big 12 with a 1-17 record in the conference. Two transfer additions have helped, Hailey Van Lith, who spent last year at then-defending champion LSU, after moving from Louisville, and Sedona Prince, coming last season from Oregon.
On Sunday, Prince had 31 points and 16 boards while Van Lith had 18 points and 10 assists, the first time in two decades TCU had a pair of players with double doubles in the same game.
Since the 1987-88 season, the USBWA has named a women’s National Player of the Year. For the 2012-13 season, the national and weekly player award became named for Hall of Famer and former UCLA All-American Ann Meyers Drysdale while the national and weekly freshman award is being given in the name of former Tennessee all-American Tamika Catchings, which was applied at the start of the 2019-20 season.
At the conclusion of the regular season, the USBWA will name finalists for both individual awards, which is voted on by the entire membership of the USBWA.
The winners of the 2025 Ann Meyers Drysdale National Player of the Year and Tamika Catchings National Freshman of the Year will be announced and presented at the USBWA’s annual awards event on site at the NCAA Women’s Final Four in Tampa.
The U.S. Basketball Writers Association was formed in 1956 at the urging of then-NCAA Executive Director Walter Byers. With some 900 members worldwide, it is one of the most influential organizations in college basketball. It has selected a women’s All-America team since the 1996-97 season. For more information on the USBWA and its award programs, contact executive director Malcolm Moran at 814-574-1485.
Nevertheless, program records and history were noteworthy to feed into the action completed the past week, helping to decide and hand out the new set of women’s awards from the U.S. Basketball Writers Association.
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