The Cheryl Miller Award is an award presented annually to the best women's basketball
small forward
The small forward (SF), also known as the three or swingman, is one of the five positions in a regulation basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular c ...
in the
National Collegiate Athletic Association
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athlete, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic sports, ...
(NCAA)
Division I competition. It is named after Hall of Famer
Cheryl Miller. While at Riverside (CA) Polytechnic High School, Miller set a single game scoring record of 105 points in a game in 1982. She was a four-time All-America, a three-time
Naismith Player of the Year and a
Wade Trophy winner while accumulating 3,018 career points at
USC from 1982 to 1986. Miller is a 1984 Olympic gold medalist and was named the best college basketball player, both male and female, in 1986 by
Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twice ...
.
Origin
The Cheryl Miller Award was first presented in 2018, when WBCA and the Naismith Hall, in collaboration with ESPN, incorporated the
Nancy Lieberman Award
The Nancy Lieberman Award, named for Basketball Hall of Fame legend Nancy Lieberman, was given annually by the Rotary Club of Detroit in the Award's first 14 years to the nation's top collegiate point guard in women's Division I basketball. Sue Bi ...
, presented since 2000 to the top NCAA women's point guard, into a new set of awards known as the "Naismith Starting Five". All five awards are presented at the WBCA convention (except in 2020, when the convention was not held due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...
) to players at each of the five traditional basketball positions. These awards parallel a previously existing set of men's basketball positional awards also presented by the Hall. In addition to the Lieberman Award, the other three new awards are:
*
Ann Meyers Drysdale Shooting Guard Award
*
Katrina McClain Power Forward Award
*
Lisa Leslie Center Award
Selection
Winner for each of the Starting Five awards is determined by a selection committee consisting of Hall of Famers, WBCA coaching members, and media, and headed by the award's namesake. Fan voting through the Hall's website is also incorporated into the selection process.
Key
Winners
Winners by school
See also
*
Julius Erving Award – the counterpart to the Miller Award; given to the best men's NCAA small forward
References
External links
Official website
{{Cheryl Miller Award
College basketball player of the year awards in the United States
College basketball trophies and awards in the United States
College women's basketball in the United States
Sports awards honoring women
Awards established in 2018
College sports trophies and awards in the United States