PLAYER OF THE YEAR: A junior from Missouri City, Texas, Michelle Nwokedi (pronounced Woe-kedi) is a forward on the Penn women’s basketball team. For her outstanding play this past season, during which she led the Quakers in scoring (14.7 points per game) and rebounding (9.3 per game), she was a unanimous First Team All-Ivy selection, a First Team All-Big 5 selection, and the Ivy League Player of the Year. Nwokedi has racked up awards since enrolling at Penn. After her freshman season, she was named Ivy League Rookie of the Year, and following her sophomore campaign, she was named First Team All-Ivy and First Team All-Big 5.

GET BUCKETS: Nwokedi, who has been playing basketball since fourth grade, has vastly improved her game from year to year. She averaged 9.3 points and 7.4 boards as a freshman and 14.0 and 9.6 as a sophomore. She bettered her 3-point shooting from around 29 percent during her first two seasons, to almost 40 percent last season. “After every season, we meet with Coach [Mike McLaughlin] and we discuss goals for the upcoming season, and each year I just strive to be better than the year before,” she says. “Coach always pushes me to challenge myself. In practice every day, I try to give it 110 percent and go hard against my teammates, who make me better.”

TOURNEY TIME: The women’s basketball team, the defending Ivy League Champions, won the inaugural Ivy League Tournament this year to advance to the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament, where they lost a heartbreaker to Texas A&M. Nwokedi says the Ivy tournament was “one of the most fun experiences of playing college basketball,” and playing in the NCAA Tournament was a “first-class” experience. “It didn’t go the way we planned, but I’m still very proud of the growth we showed,” she says. “People like to talk down on the Ivy League, and talk about how we’re not as strong of a conference, but you can see by our games, we do put up a fight and we do try to prove that the Ivy League can play.”

HOUSTON, YOU HAVE A FAN: Nwokedi is a Houston Rockets fan. She says Rockets guard James Harden deserves the MVP award even though Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook averaged a triple-double. Her favorite player is LeBron James. “He is the most dominant and I think the best player in the NBA,” she says. “Day in and day out, he gives 110 percent, he’s a leader for his team. He knows he can dominate, but he’s not too cocky with it, and he just helps his teammates get better.”

SENIOR GOALS: As she gears up for her final season at Penn, Nwokedi says her goal is to “completely dominate.” “It’s my last year so I just want to make the most of it and be the best leader I can, and lead by example, and just absolutely dominate, and have a better season than I did this year,” she says.