Fresh off announcing their 2024/25 Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) semifinalists on Tuesday, the Naismith Awards dropped this year’s National Player of the Year (POY) semifinalist lineup on Thursday, with four NCAA basketball stars earning spots on both elite lists.

Eight of the 10 athletes in the running for POY hail from Top 10 teams, with all players coming from programs who finished the 2024/25 NCAA regular season with an AP Poll ranking.

With three semifinalists each, the ACC and SEC lead the field. The Big Ten boasts two POY semifinalists, while the Big 12 and Big East each claim one.

Only one team — No. 8 Notre Dame — saw multiple players named as POY semifinalists, with two Irish standouts making the cut.

Snagging nods on both DPOY and POY shortlists are No. 4 USC sophomore JuJu Watkins, No. 8 Notre Dame sophomore Hannah Hidalgo, No. 10 LSU senior Aneesah Morrow, and No. 1 UCLA junior Lauren Betts — the only center to earn a POY semifinalist spot.

Five guards join the four defensive standouts, including No. 3 UConn senior Paige Bueckers, No. 6 TCU grad student Hailey Van Lith, No. 8 Notre Dame grad student Olivia Miles, No. 13 Kentucky grad student Georgia Amoore, and No. 23 Florida State junior Ta’Niya Latson.

Rounding out the 2024/25 POY contenders is No. 5 Texas sophomore Madison Booker, the only forward named to the list.

Star turns have Naismith semifinalists topping the NCAA

On the Division I scoring sheet, Latson and Watkins top all other NCAA players with 24.9 and 24.6 points per game, respectively. Hidalgo's 24.2 average also puts her as the nation's No. 4 scorer.

Capping her season as the No. 3 dime-dropper is Amoore, who averages just under seven assists per game.

As the nation's top overall and best offensive rebounder, Morrow's 27 double-doubles on the season — five more than any other Division I player — helped secure her DPOY and POY semifinalist spots.

Meanwhile, Miles also owns an elite multi-stat NCAA position, finishing 2024/25 regular-season play as the only DI athlete to post three triple-doubles.

Five of the 10 semifinalists have already claimed some POY hardware for their 2024/25 performances, with Hidalgo, Van Lith, Bueckers, Watkins, and Booker all earning the honor for their respective conferences.

Notably, lone Big East representative Bueckers already owns a Naismith POY Award. The Husky booked the honor in 2021, and still stands as the only freshman winner in the award's now 42-year history.

Ultimately, just four of the 10 Naismith POY semifinalists will move on to March 25th’s final round, with the 2024/25 winner to be crowned on April 2nd — two days before the NCAA tournament's Final Four tips off.

The Unrivaled playoffs have arrived, with Sunday’s 3×3 basketball action determining the two teams who will compete for the grand prize in Monday night’s final.

The inaugural league's two-day postseason will open with Sunday's semifinals. No. 3-seed Laces BC will first face-off against No. 2 Rose BC, with the No. 1 Lunar Owls taking on No. 4 Vinyl BC in the nightcap.

The winners will then go head-to-head on Monday, battling it out in the championship with a $50,000-per-player payday on the line.

"It’s money on the line," Lunar Owls guard Courtney Williams said earlier this week. "Anytime money is on the line, I think everybody has to up the ante."

After blasting through the regular-season with five more wins than any other club, Unrivaled co-founder Napheesa Collier's Lunar Owls are the heavy favorites to hoist hardware, particularly if Rose BC — the only team to defeat the Lunar Owls all season — is without 22-year-old star Angel Reese, who exited the regular-season finale after seemingly re-aggravating her surgically repaired left wrist.

Top athletes earn first-ever All-Unrivaled honors

While teams prep for postseason action, the offseason league handed out end-of-season awards on Thursday, minting its debut All-Unrivaled First and Second Teams.

After tallying ballots from players, coaches, and media members, top scorer Collier earned a first-team nod, alongside the league's next two most prolific points-getters, Laces wing Kayla McBride and Rose guard Chelsea Gray.

Lunar Owls guard Skylar Diggins-Smith, Vinyl wing Rhyne Howard, and the aforementioned Reese landed on the second team after excelling in assists, three-pointers, and rebounds, respectively.

All six All-Unrivaled players will feature on this weekend's court, with Sunday's lineup offering a final opportunity to see some of the sport’s biggest stars in what’s been a wildly successful debut for the league.

How to watch the 2025 Unrivaled 3×3 Basketball playoffs

Unrivaled’s first-ever playoffs tip off with Sunday's semifinals, starting with the Laces vs. Rose at 7:30 PM ET before the Vinyl's battle with the Lunar Owls at 8:30 PM ET.

The victors will then clash in Monday's championship game at 7:30 PM ET.

All three Unrivaled playoff games will air live on TNT.

As the 2024/25 NCAA basketball Selection Sunday looms, the Ivy League is tipping off its two-day conference tournament on Friday, with an automatic ticket to March Madness on the line in Saturday's championship game.

Compared to behemoths like the 18-team ACC and Big Ten, the small eight-school conference sent two squads to 2024 NCAA tournament, where Columbia fell in the First Four before West Virginia defeated Princeton in the first round.

This year, Ivy League No. 1-seed Columbia took the conference's outright regular-season title with a 13-1 league record, while the No. 2-seed Princeton Tigers and No. 3-seed Harvard Crimson also posted winning runs, following the Lions with respective 12-2 and 11-3 Ivy resumes.

Only half of the league's eight teams make the conference showdown, and the Penn Quakers eked out the No. 4-seed spot on a tiebreaker, clinching their sixth Ivy League tournament berth after finishing the season locked up with the Brown Bears.

Columbia looks to stay atop Ivy League entering March Madness

Princeton has dominated the Ivy in recent years, earning 11 March Madness trips in the NCAA tournament's last 14 iterations and making two national second-round appearances behind now-UConn starter Kaitlyn Chen.

However, Columbia is the conference favorite this year, with the Lions taking aim at their second-ever NCAA tournament appearance.

Columbia's first March Madness trip came just last year, buoyed by the team's all-time leading scorer and the program's first-ever WNBA draftee, Connecticut Sun guard Abbey Hsu.

While the Lions are expected to take this weekend's title, booking a likely NCAA tournament No. 11 seed alongside the Ivy League's automatic bid, ESPN’s Bracketology currently has the conference fielding three teams in the national bracket — both Princeton and Harvard are predicted to snag one of the final four at-large spots on Sunday.

All in all, breaking into the outer margins of the NCAA tournament bracket is no small feat, but March Madness rests on the premise that even the smallest conferences can change the game with a single upset.

How to watch the 2025 Ivy League conference tournament

No. 1-seed Columbia will tips off Friday's semifinals against No. 4 Penn at 4:30 PM ET, before No. 2 Princeton and No. 3 Harvard battle at 7:30 PM ET.

The winners will face-off for the conference title and the Ivy League's automatic March Madness bid on Saturday at 5:30 PM ET.

Both Friday semifinals will air live on ESPN+, with ESPNU broadcasting Saturday's championship game.

The 2025 NWSL season kick-off is here, with all of the league's 14 teams opening their regular-season campaigns this weekend.

The Orlando Pride enters as the reigning NWSL Shield and Championship winners, while Kansas City Current forward Temwa Chawinga will defends her league MVP title this season — but rising contenders are bound to challenge 2024’s titans.

"Everybody’s gonna hunt after us, and we need to deal with this and find a way to keep doing our best to keep making history for this club," Orlando captain Marta told reporters last week.

"It's exciting to know that everybody is gonna look to us and then try to make it difficult for us."

Revamped rosters headline 2025 NWSL kick-off

After an offseason packed with coaching hires and player movement, many clubs will be debuting rosters that look decidedly different from last year — significantly raising the stakes of the 2025 season openers.

While Marta's Pride will begin their title defense against the rebranded Chicago Stars FC on Friday and Chawinga's Current will host the already injury-bitten Portland Thorns on Saturday, three of the weekend's other five matches will put some of the offseason's most dramatic roster shifts to the test.

The first marquee matchup will put Houston's revamped roster squarely in the spotlight.

After finishing 2024 at the bottom of the NWSL table, the Dash raided the league, signing rising stars like USWNT forward Yazmeen Ryan and former Angel City attacker Messiah Bright in an attempt to go from worst to first this season.

Houston's Friday opponent, however, is a tough task. The Dash will host 2024 runners-up Washington, who managed to win last weekend's 2025 Challenge Cup despite being plagued by injuries.

Stealing Saturday's stage are two teams who sat on opposite sides of one of the offseason's biggest trades — Gotham FC and the Seattle Reign.

After helping the NJ/NY club to their first-ever championship in 2023 and the 2024 semifinals, USWNT star Lynn Biyendolo (neé Williams) requested a move to Seattle. The December trade also sent goalkeeper Cassie Miller to the Reign, with Gotham receiving promising young midfielder Jaelin Howell.

Closing out the 2025 NWSL season kick-off on Sunday are the league's SoCal rivals, Angel City and San Diego.

Both teams enter the season as works-in-progress, as Angel City will compete under interim manager Sam Laity until June while the Wave charts its 2025 course with both a new coach and some recent big-name departures.

How to watch the 2025 NWSL season kick-off

The NWSL's 2025 season is full of potential, with 2024's top four teams seeking to solidify their dominance as new contenders look to rise on this year's pitch.

All the action begins at 8 PM ET on Friday, when both Orlando vs. Chicago and Houston vs. Washington will kick off, airing live on Prime and NWSL+, respectively.

Saturday will start with Kansas City vs. Portland at 12:45 PM ET on ABC, before Racing Louisville and the NC Courage kick off at 5 PM ET on NWSL+.

ION will live broadcast Saturday'd nightcaps, with the Utah Royals taking on Bay FC at 7:30 PM ET before Seattle and Gotham face off at 10 PM ET.

Rivals Angel City and San Diego will cap the weekend with Sunday's 6:50 PM ET tilt, airing live on ESPN2.

The WNBA released details about the league's 2025 Draft on Wednesday, dropping timing, venue, broadcast, and ticketing information ahead of the event's April 14th return to New York.

Following last year’s success in which the league included an audience of fans for the first time in the Draft's history, the 2025 edition will once again be open to the public.

To include more fans in this year's iteration, the WNBA is relocating the event from the Brooklyn Academy of Music to the higher-capacity The Shed at Hudson Yards, located on the west side of midtown Manhattan.

For fans who can’t attend, the 2025 WNBA Draft will air on ESPN starting at 7:30 PM ET, after the 7 PM ET WNBA Countdown.

"At a time when the passion and excitement surrounding the WNBA has never been higher, we continue to focus on creating elevated events that WNBA fans won’t want to miss," said WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert in the league's statement. "The tremendous fan engagement we enjoyed at draft last year was a precursor to a season in which we ultimately set records for viewership, attendance, digital consumption and merchandise sales."

"We look forward to welcoming in a new set of WNBA rookies in a memorable way."

First the Orange Carpet, then the rush to make a WNBA roster

As is tradition, top prospects like expected overall No. 1 pick Paige Bueckers will attend a celebratory lighting ceremony at the Empire State Building to begin the day, and walk the iconic "Orange Carpet" prior to the Draft.

Once the broadcast begins, Engelbert will announce each draftee, sending the top pick to the 2025 Draft Lottery-winning Dallas Wings, and the second to the Seattle Storm.

The Washington Mystics currently hold the third and fourth selections, while 2025 WNBA expansion team Golden State will recruit their first-ever rookie Valkyrie with the night's No. 5 pick.

With the league's 29th season tipping off on May 16th, the selected college and international players will face a baptism by fire, with one month to relocate and then prove themselves worthy of making a WNBA roster.

How to buy tickets to the 2025 WNBA Draft

Tickets to attend the 2025 WNBA Draft go on sale at 10 AM ET on Friday, March 21st, with fans able to register their interest now via WNBA Experiences.