Bueckers, Betts, Booker among Wooden finalists

Upcoming Final Four participants Paige Bueckers of UConn, Lauren Betts of UCLA and Madison Booker of Texas headline the five finalists for the Wooden Award, given to the most outstanding player in women's college basketball.

Notre Dame's Hannah Hidalgo and USC's JuJu Watkins round out the finalists, which were announced Tuesday on ESPN.

The winner will be announced later in April.

Those five players also were featured on the Wooden All-American team, which also includes Kentucky's Georgia Amoore, Florida State's Ta'Niya Latson, Notre Dame's Olivia Miles, LSU's Aneesah Morrow and TCU's Hailey Van Lith.

Bueckers, who won the Wooden Award in 2021 as a freshman, is seeking her first national title as her Huskies make their 16th Final Four appearance in the past 17 seasons. She has said that she will declare after the season for the WNBA draft, where she is the presumed No. 1 pick.

Betts and the Bruins are heading to their first Final Four in program history, and the No. 1 overall seed will take on UConn on Friday (ESPN, 9 p.m. ET). Booker and the Longhorns are returning for the first time since 2003 and will take on South Carolina on Friday (ESPN, 7 p.m. ET).

Watkins, who was considered a front-runner for player of the year, suffered a season-ending ACL tear in the second round of the NCAA tournament. The Trojans still advanced to the Elite Eight before losing to Bueckers and the Huskies.

Two players featured on the All-America list -- Latson and Miles -- intend to enter the transfer portal. Miles' decision came as a surprise, as she was projected to be the No. 2 draft pick this year, but she has decided to forgo the draft and switch schools.