NAISMITH BASKETBALL HALL OF FAME ANNOUNCES THE TOP 10 CANDIDATES FOR THE 2025 MEN’S AND WOMEN’S SMALL FORWARD OF THE YEAR AWARDS

– Fan Voting Begins Friday, February 7 –

SPRINGFIELD, MASS. — The Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame introduced the High 10 candidates for the 2025 Julius Erving Award and, in partnership with the Ladies’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation (WBCA), the High 10 candidates 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 yr by recognizing the highest small forwards in Division I males’s school basketball.

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

*Gamers can play their approach onto and off the checklist at any level within the 2024-25 season.

Followers are inspired to take part in Fan Voting in each of the remaining rounds beginning on Friday, February 7, on hoophallawards.com. The Fan Vote will rely as one committee vote through the finalist choice course of.

In March, the High 10 checklist will probably be narrowed to simply 5, and in late March, the 5 finalists will probably be introduced to Erving, Miller, and the Corridor of Fame’s choice committees, the place winners will probably be chosen. The Choice Committees for the Julius Erving and Cheryl Miller Awards are composed of high males’s and ladies’s school basketball personnel, together with media members, head coaches, sports activities data administrators, and Corridor of Famers.

The winner of the 2025 Erving and Miller Awards will probably be introduced on a to-be-determined date, together with the opposite 4 members of the Males’s and Ladies’s Beginning 5. Extra awards being introduced embrace 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 data on the 2025 Julius Erving and Cheryl Miller Awards and the newest 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 ladies’ basketball in any respect ranges of competitors. The WBCA provides instructional sources that coaches want to assist make themselves higher leaders, academics, and mentors to their gamers; offers alternatives for coaches to attach with friends within the occupation; serves because the unifying voice of a various neighborhood of coaches to these organizations that management the sport; and celebrates these coaches, gamers, and different people who excel every year and contribute to the development of the game. For extra data, go to us on-line: WBCA.org, observe @wbca1981, or name 1-770-279-8027.

Concerning the Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame: 

Positioned in Springfield, Massachusetts, the 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 stage—women and men, novice {and professional} gamers, coaches, and contributors—each domestically and internationally. The Corridor of Fame museum is dwelling to greater than 475 inductees and over 40,000 sq. ft of basketball historical past. Practically 200,000 individuals go to the Corridor of Fame museum every year to be taught in regards to the sport, expertise the interactive reveals, and take a look at their expertise on the Jerry Colangelo “Courtroom of Goals.” Greatest 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 data on the Basketball Corridor of Fame group, its museum, and occasions, go to hoophall.com and observe @hoophallU.