Northwestern’s Veronica Burton Named WBCA National Defensive Player of the Year

Wildcat senior guard is first Big Ten player to earn the award

 

ROSEMONT, Ill. — Northwestern University senior guard Veronica Burton is the 2022 Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) National Defensive Player of the Year, the organization announced Monday. Burton is the first Big Ten Conference student-athlete to earn the award, which has been presented annually since 2007.

A native of Newton, Mass., Burton was chosen as a first-team All-Big Ten selection for the second consecutive year in 2021-22, receiving unanimous accolades from the conference coaches. In addition, she is a finalist for the Naismith National Defensive Player of the Year award, the Nancy Lieberman Award (country’s top point guard) and the Dawn Staley Award (country’s top guard). She was a second-team All-America honoree by The Athletic and a third-team selection by the Associated Press, becoming the first Northwestern player ever chosen for AP honors.

This season, Burton leads the nation in steals (4.03 per game), is third in assist/turnover ratio (3.12) and sixth in assists (6.4 per game), as of Monday. She also averaged career highs of 17.8 points and 5.5 rebounds per game.

Burton, who recently announced her intention to enter the 2022 WNBA Draft, was a three-time Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, becoming only the second student-athlete in conference history to capture that honor three times (Penn State’s Tanisha Wright was the first from 2003-05). She ranks second in Big Ten history with 394 career steals and 18th in the conference record book with 575 assists. Burton also scored 1,536 career points while leading the Wildcats to the 2020 Big Ten title (NU’s first in 30 years), a trip to the second round of the 2021 NCAA Tournament (the Wildcats’ first NCAA tourney win since 1993) and a spot in the 2019 WNIT championship game.