Washington State’s Charlisse Leger-Walker on Wooden list for second straight year

For the second year in a row, Washington State guard Charlisse Leger-Walker is on the watch list for the John R. Wooden award emblematic of the best player in college women’s basketball.

The watch list, which includes 50 players, was announced Tuesday by ESPN.com.

Leger-Walker is the only player in WSU history to be named to the watch list, and now she’s done it twice. Earlier this year, the junior from New Zealand was picked to the Naismith Trophy and Ann Meyers Drysdale watch list.

Leger-Walker is off to a fast start. In three games, all WSU victories, she’s averaging 25 points a game. In a come-from-behind win at San Francisco on Friday, she scored a career-high 35 points. All but nine of those points came after halftime.

On Sunday against Prairie View A&M, she tied the WSU program record for quickest to 1,000 career points, as she scored her 1,000th career point in 57 career games, tying Jeanne Eggart.

Her performance during the opening week of the season earned Leger-Walker the first Pac-12 Player of the Week Award of the season.

The Wooden Award All-American Team will be announced the week of the Elite Eight round of the NCAA Tournament. The winner of the 2023 John R. Wooden Award will be presented in Los Angeles in April.

Washington State jumps back into action on Friday, when the Cougars travel to Laie, Hawai’i for the Northshore Showcase. The Cougars will play BYU on Friday and Troy on Monday.