NAISMITH BASKETBALL HALL OF FAME ANNOUNCES FIVE FINALISTS FOR THE 2025 MEN’S AND WOMEN’S SMALL FORWARD OF THE YEAR AWARDS

– Fan Voting Begins Friday, March 7 –

SPRINGFIELD, MASS. — The Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame introduced the 5 finalists for the 2025 Julius Erving Award and, in partnership with the Ladies’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation (WBCA), the 5 finalists for the 2025 Cheryl Miller Award. 

The annual Julius Erving Award, named after the Class of 1993 Corridor of Famer and 16-year skilled basketball participant, celebrates its eleventh 12 months by recognizing the highest small forwards in Division I males’s faculty basketball.

The Cheryl Miller Award, in its eighth 12 months, honors the highest small forwards in ladies’s Division I ladies’s faculty basketball. It’s named after the three-time Naismith Participant of the Yr and Class of 1995 Corridor of Famer.

Followers are inspired to take part in Fan Voting beginning on Friday, March 7, on hoophallawards.com. The Fan Vote will depend as one committee vote in the course of the finalist choice course of.

Later this month, the finalists will likely be offered to Erving and Miller and the Corridor of Fame’s choice committee. The Choice Committees for the Julius Erving and Cheryl Miller Awards are composed of prime males’s and girls’s faculty basketball personnel, together with media members, head coaches, sports activities info administrators, and Corridor of Famers.

The winner of the 2025 Erving and Miller Awards will likely be offered on a to-be-determined date, together with the opposite 4 members of the Males’s and Ladies’s Beginning 5. Extra awards being offered embody the Bob Cousy and Nancy Lieberman Awards (Level Guard), Jerry West and Ann Meyers Drysdale Awards (Capturing Guard), Karl Malone and Katrina McClain Awards (Energy Ahead), and the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lisa Leslie Awards (Heart).

Earlier winners of the Julius Erving Award are Dalton Knecht, Tennessee (2024), Jalen Wilson, Kansas (2023), Wendell Moore Jr., Duke (2022), Corey Kispert, Gonzaga (2021), Saddiq Bey, Villanova (2020), Rui Hachimura, Gonzaga (2019), Mikal Bridges, Villanova (2018), Josh Hart, Villanova (2017), Denzel Valentine, Michigan State (2016), and Stanley Johnson, Arizona (2015). 

Earlier winners of the Cheryl Miller Award are Madison Booker, Texas (2024), Ashley Joens, Iowa State (2021-23), Satou Sabally, Oregon (2020), Bridget Carleton, Iowa State (2019), and Gabby Williams, Connecticut (2018).

For extra info on the 2025 Julius Erving and Cheryl Miller Awards and the most recent updates, go to hoophallawards.com and observe @hoophallu, #ErvingAward, and #MillerAward on X and Instagram. 

Concerning the WBCA: 

Based in 1981, the Ladies’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation is the skilled affiliation for coaches of girls’s and women’ basketball in any respect ranges of competitors. The WBCA provides instructional assets that coaches want to assist make themselves higher leaders, academics, and mentors to their gamers; supplies 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, observe @wbca1981, or name 1-770-279-8027.

Concerning the Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame: 

Situated in Springfield, Massachusetts, town the place basketball was born, the Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame is an unbiased non-profit 501(c)(3) group devoted to selling, preserving, and celebrating the sport of basketball at each degree—women and men, newbie {and professional} gamers, coaches, and contributors—each domestically and internationally. The Corridor of Fame museum is house to greater than 475 inductees and over 40,000 sq. ft of basketball historical past. Almost 200,000 individuals go to the Corridor of Fame museum annually to be taught in regards to the recreation, expertise the interactive displays, and check their abilities on the Jerry Colangelo “Court docket of Goals.” Finest recognized for its annual marquee Enshrinement Ceremony honoring the sport’s elite, the Corridor of Fame additionally operates over 70 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 observe @hoophallU.