Good Day For All-American Diggins
It’s safe to say that Skylar Diggins had a pretty good day on Tuesday.
The South Bend native and Notre Dame basketball star first was named to the Associated Press All-American team for the second straight year.
Diggins then went out and scored a game-high 24 points to lead her No. 2 team to its third straight trip to the Final Four with an 87-76 victory over Duke Tuesday night in a regional final game in Norfolk, Virginia.
Diggins, a senior southpaw guard, was a unanimous choice to the AP first-team Tuesday, along with 6-8 senior Brittney Griner of No. 1 Baylor. The South Bend Washington product averaged 17 points, 5.9 assists and 3.1 steals per game her senior season.
Diggins, whose team lost to Baylor in the national title game in 2012, became the school’s all-time leading scorer on Sunday during a win over Kansas in the NCAA Tournament. She joins Ruth Riley as the only Irish players to earn first-team All-American honors in consecutive seasons. Riley, who played at North Miami High School, did it in 2000 and 2001. Riley led the Irish to their only national championship in 2001.
The No. 2 Irish, who are 35-1 and have won a school record 30 straight games, face Big East rival UConn (33-4) Sunday night in the Final Four in New Orleans. Notre Dame has defeated UConn three times this season, including by a 96-87 final in three overtimes in South Bend on March 4 and by one and two points in two other contests.
Griner, whose team was upset by Louisville in the NCAA Tourney on Sunday, becomes just the fifth three-time AP All-American. The towering center, who averaged 23.4 points, 9.4 rebounds and 5.2 blocks per game, joins the elite company that includes only Chamique Holdsclaw of Tennessee, Alana Beard of Duke, Courtney Paris of Oklahoma and Maya Moore of UConn. Paris and Moore were the only two players to earn the honor all four years.
The AP first team also includes Chiney Ogwumike of Stanford, Elena Delle Donne of Delaware and Odyssey Sims of Baylor.
Ogwumike averaged 22 points and 13 rebounds per game for the Cardinal. She and her sister Nnemkadi, who graduated last year, were the first pair of sisters ever to be named All-Americans.
Delle Donne earned All-American honors for the second straight time. The 6-5 scoring machine finished her career as the fifth all-time leading scorer in NCAA history with 3,039 points.
Sims, who teamed with Griner to lead Baylor to the national championship in 2012, averaged 12.5 points and 5.7 assists per game.
The AP second team includes junior Alyssa Thomas of Maryland, sophomore Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis of UConn, junior Maggie Lucas of Penn State, junior Chelsea Gray of Duke and senior A’dia Mathies of Kentucky.
The AP team was chosen by its 40-member national media panel that votes in the weekly Top 25 poll. The voting was done before the NCAA Tournament.