As the 2025/26 Player of the Year race heats up, Tuesday's NCAA women's basketball conference awards teased the front-runners for this year's national honors.
The Big Ten named UCLA center Lauren Betts its Big Ten Player of the Year (PoY) and, for the second season in a row, the Bruins' star also collected the conference's Defensive Player of the Year (DPoY) award.
Also running it back this year is Notre Dame's Hannah Hidalgo, who became the first-ever ACC player to earn both PoY and DPoY in back-to-back seasons. Even more, the junior guard continued her iron grip on the ACC's defensive title — an honor Hidalgo has won in all three of her NCAA seasons.
For the second year in a row, a TCU transfer and a West Virginia standout scored the Big 12's top honors, as Hidalgo's former teammate Olivia Miles took home the conference's PoY title in her first season as a Horned Frog, while Mountaineer senior Jordan Harrison earned the DPoY award.
Meanwhile in the SEC, Vanderbilt sophomore and reigning Division I scoring leader Mikayla Blakes rose to the top of the NCAA's deepest conference to win PoY, while South Carolina's Raven Johnson capped her senior year with the Gamecocks as the SEC's DPoY.
"I just want to do whatever my team needed me to do and put me in that position to be able to win," Blakes said this week.
With a brand-new NCAA basketball PoY guaranteed this year after a March Madness injury benched USC's 2024/25 winner JuJu Watkins for the season, fans can expect UConn stars Sarah Strong and Azzi Fudd to remain in the mix alongside national shortlist leaders Betts, Blakes, and Hidalgo as Big East conference awards emerge later this week.
