IRVING, Texas - Redshirt junior Kendall Noble has been named the 2015-16 C-USA Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year as announced by the conference office Monday morning. Noble is the second consecutive and sixth overall conference player of the year in WKU's storied history.
The conference's individual awards were selected through a vote including the league's head coaches and a media representative for each school.
Noble becomes the first player to sweep C-USA's Player and Defensive Player of the Year honors since Houston's Courtney Taylor accomplished the feat in 2011. She is only the fourth player in conference history to pull off the sweep in both categories, joining Taylor, Jillian Robbins of Tulsa (2006) and Sandora Irvin of TCU (2005).
The Hazard, Ky., native's Player of the Year honor also gives WKU the distinction of being the first school in C-USA history to earn back-to-back Player of the Year awards with two different players. Former WKU great Chastity Gooch captured the top individual honor in the Lady Toppers' inaugural C-USA campaign in 2014-15.
Noble captured C-USA Defensive Player of the Year honors for the second consecutive season, becoming only the fourth player in league history to do so. Tulane's Janell Burse (1999, 2000, 2001), TCU's Sandora Irvin (2003, 2004, 2005) and Tulsa's Jillian Robbins (2006, 2007) are the only other individuals to earn consecutive awards as the league's top defensive stopper.
In each of Michelle Clark-Heard's four seasons at the helm of the program, WKU has produced the conference's Defensive Player of the Year. In 2013 and 2014, Gooch won back-to-back Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year honors before Noble's consecutive honors in 2015 and 2016.
Noble joins WKU's illustrious list of conference Players of the Year with her victory, moving alongside Lillie Mason (1986), Shala Reese (2003), Tiffany Porter-Talbert (2005), Crystal Kelly (2008) and Gooch (2015). Of WKU's six honorees, five have earned All-American accolades, including Noble's CoSIDA Third Team Academic All-American honors earlier this month.
The lone player in Division I averaging 17.0 points, 7.5 rebounds, 5.0 assists, 2.5 steals and 0.9 blocks, Noble ranks in the top 10 in C-USA in all five categories this season. The redshirt junior has posted 11 20-point games, including a career-best 31-point outburst against North Texas, and joined WKU's 1,000-point club as its 36th member in January.
For her career, Noble already sits high on WKU's all-time charts in a handful of categories. She ranks second in career steals with 261 takeaways, second in career usage at 32.3 minutes per game, seventh with 402 assists and 10th with 482 attempted free throws.
Noble and the Lady Toppers (24-5, 15-3 C-USA) earned the No. 3 seed and a double bye into the quarterfinals of this week's C-USA Tournament and are set to take the court on Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m. (CT) in Birmingham, Ala. WKU will face either No. 6 seed Marshall, No. 11 seed UTSA or No. 14 seed FIU in its first game and posted a perfect 4-0 record against its potential opponents in the regular season.
Tickets can be purchased for the 2016 C-USA Tournament through the WKU Ticket Office, which can be reached online at WKUTickets.com or by phone at 1-800-5-BIGRED or 745-5222 locally.
2015-16 C-USA Individual Awards
Player of the Year: Kendall Noble, WKU
Defensive Player of the Year: Kendall Noble, WKU
Freshman of the Year: Alex Johnson, Middle Tennessee
Newcomer of the Year: Starr Breedlove, UTEP
Sixth Player of the Year: Sparkle Taylor, UTEP
Coach of the Year: Keitha Adams, UTEP
