ST. LOUIS, Mo. –For the second-straight year, Drake’s Anna Miller has been named the State Farm Scholar-Athlete of the Year and headlines a group of six of the league’s top players named to the 2025 Missouri Valley Conference Women’s Basketball Scholar-Athlete First Team, as voted on by the Conference’s women’s basketball communications directors.

Miller has maintained a perfect 4.00 grade-point average (GPA) as a health sciences major. The senior ranks among the league’s leaders in scoring, rebounding and blocks. She is joined on the first team by teammate Katie Dinnebier, Tuti Jones (Belmont), Elyce Knudsen (Illinois State), Nevaeh Thomas (Illinois State) and Katelyn Young (Murray State).

Courtney Becker and Abbie Aalsma also represented the Bulldogs on the Scholar-Athlete Second and Third Teams, respectively.

The criteria for the MVC Scholar-Athlete Team voting parallels the College Sports Communicators (CSC) standards for Academic All-America nominations. Student-athletes must be at least a sophomore academically and athletically and must be enrolled at their institution at the time of nomination either as undergraduates or graduate students. An undergraduate student-athlete must have at least a 3.50 cumulative grade point average (on a 4.0 scale), and a graduate student-athlete must have at least a 3.50 cumulative grade point average (on a 4.0 scale) as both an undergraduate and a grad student unless they are in their first semester as a graduate student and don’t have an established
graduate GPA.

A total of 38 Valley student-athletes met the nomination criteria for scholar-athlete honors in 2025.

2024-25 MVC SCHOLAR-ATHLETE TEAMS

First Team

Second Team

Third Team

IOWA CITY, Iowa – University of Iowa senior Payton Sandfort has been named honorable mention All-Big Ten by both the coaches and media, it was announced Tuesday on B1G Today on the Big Ten Network.

It is the third honor of Sandfort’s career. He was the Big Ten Sixth Man of the Year as a sophomore and a third-team All-Big Ten selection as a junior.

Sophomore Ladji Dembele was also named Iowa’s Big Ten Sportsmanship Award recipient.

Sandfort is averaging 16.3 points and 6.3 rebounds during the 2024-25 season, ranking second on the team in both categories.  He has a team-best 13 20-point games this season and ranks fourth in the conference with 74 3-point field goals.

This season, Sandfort has scored 505 points, eclipsing the 500-point mark for a second consecutive season.  He is the first Hawkeye since Luka Garza to accomplish the feat and he’s the 12th Hawkeye to have two 500-point seasons all-time.

The Waukee, Iowa, native currently ranks 13th in the record books with 1,572 career points and is third all-time with 261 career 3-point field goals – two shy of passing Jeff Horner for No. 2 all-time. He is one of two players in Iowa history to have 1,500+ points, 500+ rebounds and 250+ 3-point field goals.

Sandfort is also on track to break the program’s all-time career free throw percentage record.  He has made 89.5 percent (263-of-294) of his career attempts, which puts him on track to better Jordan Bohannon’s school record of 88.7 percent.

The Hawkeyes (16-15) head to Indianapolis for the 2025 TIAA Big Ten Tournament.  No. 15 seed Iowa will face No. 10 seed Ohio State on Wednesday at approximately 5 p.m. (CT) at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.  The game will be streamed on Peacock.

There were growing pains and challenges for the Riverside boy’s’ basketball team this season, but this was a team that had zero seniors on the roster. The 8-14 Bulldogs consisted of five juniors and an astonishing nine sophomores. With a roster that young, the foreseeable future is extremely bright for Riverside. Head Coach Nick Kroon said offense was a heavy hit in the summer.

The Bulldogs kicked off their season with a road victory at Missouri Valley 69-59 getting 21 points from Sophomore Owen Fenner. This led Riverside to winning three of the first four games of the season with home wins vs. AHSTW and East Mills. The Bulldogs were able to win five of their eight victories on their home floor.

The Bulldogs will get two more seasons out of their top three leading scorers, Peyton Amdor, Owen Fenner and Cole Jeppesen. Leading rebounder Dawson Henderson will also be seen as a leader for this team as he will enter his senior season next November.

With getting the entire roster back for the Riverside, Kroon says it is time to develop a lot of depth amongst the Bulldogs.

Riverside’s plan will be to gain more experience, get faster and stronger for the 2025-2026 campaign.

UNI coach Ben Jacobson is waiting to see if the Panthers will take part in a post season tournament. UNI is 20-12 after falling to Valparaiso in the quarterfinal round of the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament.

Jacobson says the N-I-T and the College Insider Dot-Com Tournaments are two of the possible landing spots.

In this era of N-I-L and the transfer portal Jacobson says discussions are already taking place to see which players are planning to return next season.

Based on who is returning will determine what the Panthers may search for in the portal.

Iowa coach Fran McCaffery believes the Hawkeyes will play in a post season tournament no matter what happens at the Big Ten Tournament. The Hawkeyes are 16-15 heading into Wednesday night’s game against Ohio State and will need five wins in five days to win the tournament and be part of the NCAA field. The NIT and a new tournament in Las Vegas called the Crown are possible landing spots.

The Hawkeyes extended their season with an 83-68 win at Nebraska on Sunday.

Ohio State beat the Hawkeyes 82-65 in Columbus back in late January. In that game the Buckeyes scored 52 points in the second half to blow the game open.

McCaffery says impatience on offense triggered Ohio State’s fast break.

A concern for Iowa is Ohio State junior guard Bruce Thorton. He leads the Buckeyes at 17 and-a-half points per game and is connecting on nearly 43 percent from three point range.

The winner advances to face Illinois Thursday night.