Thursday, August 16, 2018

INDIANAPOLIS – Fresh off one of the top basketball seasons in GNAC history, Montana State Billings forward Alisha Breen has been named the conference’s finalist for the NCAA Woman of the Year Award.

Breen was among a record 581 nominees for the annual award, a number that was reduced to just 153 women on Thursday. She seeks to join former Connecticut star Rebecca Lobo (1995) as the only basketball players to take home the award.

The selection committee will narrow the field of remaining candidates to 30 in early September, with one-third of those players coming from Division II. The winner will be announced on October 28 after one more cut is made to bring the total number of finalists down to nine (three from each division).

Breen finished her Yellowjackets’ career by being named a First-Team All American and Google Cloud/CoSIDA Academic All-American in 2018. She was the key leader on a team that made it to the NCAA Division II Elite Eight for just the second time in school history, breaking the GNAC record for points scored (791) in the process. That mark was the second-highest total in the NCAA.

The Choteau, Montana native led the NCAA in minutes played (1,337), free throws made (226) and free-throw attempts (259) last year. The records continued in the form of GNAC Player of the Week honors, which she earned five times throughout the season.

Breen got the job done in the classroom as well, earning a 3.67 grade point average and completing her degree in health and human performance. After graduating and being named the GNAC Female Co-Scholar Athlete of the Year, she was named as the assistant coach of the Montana State Billings women’s basketball team on June 28.

Breen wasn’t the GNAC’s only nominee this season. Concordia women’s soccer star Ana Delgadillo joined the list of nominees earlier this summer after a standout senior season in Portland. Delgadillo was named the GNAC Defensive Player of the Year and led the Cavaliers to their first-ever conference regular season title.

The group of 153 conference nominees for the NCAA Woman of the Year award includes 34 Division II athletes. Award nominees are selected based on the four pillars of the program as established by the NCAA: academics, athletics, service and leadership.