STANFORD, Calif. – Stanford junior Lili Thompson was among 50 women’s basketball players named to the Naismith Trophy Women’s Watch List the Atlanta Tipoff Club announced Wednesday.
It’s the second such early season recognition for Thompson, who was named to the John R. Wooden Award Women’s Preseason Top 30 on Nov. 17.
The Atlanta Tipoff Club administers the Naismith Awards, which have become the most prestigious national honors in all of college basketball. Named in honor of Dr. James Naismith, inventor of the game of basketball, the Naismith Trophy recognizes the top Men’s and Women’s College Basketball Players of the Year.
Thompson is coming off a Pac-12 Player of the Week nod on Nov 30 following Stanford’s most recent stretch of games. She was named the 2015 Gulf Coast Showcase Most Valuable Player after leading the Cardinal to the tournament title with averages of 21.0 points and 6.0 assists per game at the event in Florida. She led off with 26 points on 10-of-21 shooting in the opener against Missouri State on Nov. 27, an 82-65 Stanford win, then scored 19 and handed out a season-high seven assists in a 74-66 victory over Dayton a day later. In the championship on Sunday night, Thompson scored 19 and went 9-of-9 at the line to lift the Cardinal to a 71-65 overtime win against Purdue. She began the week with a 21-point outing in Stanford’s 61-58 setback against Santa Clara on Nov. 23.
In four games, Thompson averaged 20.8 points, 6.0 assists and 1.8 steals per game, shot 42.2 percent from the floor (27-for-64) and was even better from long distance, knocking down 44.1 percent of her 3-point attempts (15-for-34). She missed just one free throw all week, going 14-for-15 from the line (.933).
Thompson has scored 20 or more in four of Stanford’s seven games this season. She’s had nine career 20-point efforts, with eight coming in the month of November. Her 26-point outing against Missouri State was her fourth consecutive, making the junior captain the first Cardinal guard to score 20 in four straight games since Candice Wiggins in 2008.
She is fifth in the conference in scoring this season, averaging 19.3 points per game, sixth in assists (5.0/game), second in free throw percentage (.909), first in 3-point field goals made per game (3.3) and eighth in 3-point percentage (.451). With 901 career points, Thompson is close to becoming Stanford’s 36th 1,000-point scorer.
