STANFORD, Calif. - Stanford raked in a bevy of high-level awards in the coaches' vote of the Pac-12 Conference postseason awards, announced Tuesday afternoon.
Highlighting the awards for the Cardinal were Haley Jones, named the Player of the Year, Cameron Brink, the Defensive Player of the Year and Tara VanDerveer, the Coach of the Year. Jones, Brink and Lexie all were each named to the 15-player All-Pac-12 list; Brink, Hull and Anna Wilson were named to the All-Defensive Team and Kiki Iriafen was an honorable mention selection for the All-Freshman Team.
Jones is Stanford's 19th Pac-12 Player of the Year of all-time, but the first since Chiney Ogwumike in 2014. Stanford owns more Player of the Year honors from the conference than the rest of the league combined.
Brink is the sixth Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year for Stanford since the award began in 2008 and second straight after Wilson earned the honor last season.
The Cardinal has placed at least two players on the All-Pac-12 team since the conference changed the format to a 15-player list in 2010. Stanford's 87 All-Pac-12 selections all-time lead the league. This marks the first time in conference history that three players from the same school earned a spot on the All-Defensive Team, while Stanford has had at least one player on the squad in 13 of the award's 15 years. The winningest coach in women's college basketball history, Tara VanDerveer was chosen by her peers as the John R. Wooden Coach of the Year for the 17th time in 36 seasons of Pac-12 women's basketball and second year in a row. Ranked No. 2 nationally for 11 straight weeks, Stanford currently owns the nation's longest active win streak of 17 games, along with a 31-game Pac-12 win streak, including the postseason. The Cardinal's regular season championship was its second straight and 25th all-time as Stanford earned its eighth perfect Pac-12 season and first since 2012. She enters the postseason with an all-time record of 1,150-258 and 998-207 at Stanford.
Haley Jones, named All-Pac-12 for the second straight season, ranks 11th in the league in scoring (12.5), second in rebounding (7.9) and fifth in assists (3.6). She is one of just three Power 5 players in the country averaging those numbers this season (Caitlin Clark - Iowa; Jordan Horston - Tennessee). She has scored in double figures in 18 games, including 11 of Stanford's 16 conference games, and totaled seven double-doubles, along with the first triple-double at Stanford in nearly two decades with 17 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists against Portland. Named the Pac-12 Player of the Week twice this season, Jones has a number of big performances, including 18 points, 19 rebounds and six assists in a victory over No. 7 Tennessee, joining Chiney Ogwumike as the only Division I players this century with that line in an AP top-10 road matchup.
Cameron Brink, earning a spot on the All-Pac-12 and All-Defensive teams for the first time, has been a menace on both ends of the court for the Cardinal all season long. Ranked 18th nationally in blocked shots per game (2.37), she is already eighth all-time in Stanford history with 152 in her career, and 64 this year.. Brink also tops the league in rebounding, pulling down 8.2 boards per game, and featured a 22-rebound performance against No. 4 Indiana in November, the highest single-game total in the conference in three seasons. In that victory over the Hoosiers, Brink also added 21 points, five assists and five blocks to put together just the third 20-point, 20-rebound, five assist, five-block performance in women's college basketball since 1999-2000 and the first against a ranked team. Her 11 double-doubles are most in the league, as Brink also leads Stanford in scoring, averaging 13.6 points per game, featuring a team-high 20 double-digit scoring efforts.
Just one of 15 Stanford players to be named to the All-Pac-12 Team three different times, Lexie Hull also picked up her second selection to the league's All-Defensive Team. She eclipsed the 1,000 career point mark earlier this season and currently ranks 29th in program history with 1,284 points. Her 176 career 3-pointers are just outside the program's top-10 list and she has started every game in which she was available since her sophomore year. She led the team in scoring six times this season, including a career-high 33 points against Oregon in January. She notched two double-doubles this season, featuring 15 performances with double-figure scoring. Hull also leads the team and Pac-12 with 57 steals.
The reigning Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year, Anna Wilson earns her second selection to the All-Defensive Team, again wrecking havoc on some of the league's best competition all season long. Returning for her sixth season and playing the best basketball of her career, Wilson recently set the program record for most games played in a career, now with 152. 276 of Wilson's 531 career points (52%) have come in the last two seasons, as have 201 of her 357 career rebounds (56%), 138 of her 217 career assists (64%) and 90 of her 143 career steals (63%).
Kiki Iriafen earned honorable mention recognition for the All-Freshman Team after notching several key performances in conference play, scoring in double-figures four times against league foes, with a season-best 13 points and eight rebounds at Washington State. She shoots 57 percent from the floor and was named the Pac-12 Freshman of the Week once this season.
Stanford begins the Pac-12 Tournament in the quarterfinals, set to face the winner of No. 8 Oregon State and No. 9 Arizona State on Thursday, March 3 at 2:30 p.m.
