| Cheryl Miller Award | |
| Awarded For: | the best women's college basketball small forward in the United States |
| Presenter: | Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame & Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) |
| Country: | United States |
| Year: | 2018 |
| Holder: | Madison Booker, Texas |
| Website: | Cheryl Miller Award |
The Cheryl Miller Award is an award presented annually to the best women's basketball small forward in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (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.[1]
The Cheryl Miller Award was first presented in 2018, when WBCA and the Naismith Hall, in collaboration with ESPN, incorporated the Nancy Lieberman Award, 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) 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:
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.
| Awarded, in addition, a national Player of the Year award: the Naismith College Player of the Year, Wade Trophy or the John R. Wooden Award | ||
| Player (X) | Denotes the number of times the player has received the Cheryl Miller Award |
| Season | Player | School | Class | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017–18 | UConn | |||
| 2018–19 | Iowa State | [2] | ||
| 2019–20 | Oregon | |||
| 2020–21 | Iowa State | [3] | ||
| 2021–22 | (2) | Iowa State | [4] | |
| 2022–23 | (3) | Iowa State | [5] | |
| 2023–24 | Texas |
| School | Winners | Years | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023 | ||
| 1 | 2020 | ||
| 1 | 2024 | ||
| 1 | 2018 |