PRINCETON, N.J. – Columbia senior Kitty Henderson has been named Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year and earned unanimous First Team All-Ivy League honors, while head coach Megan Griffith and the Lions were named the Coaching Staff of the Year. This was all part of the Ivy League's women's basketball postseason honors and awards, which were announced Tuesday afternoon.
 
Sophomore Riley Weiss joined Henderson as a First Team All-Ivy League honoree. The duo becomes just the second set of teammates in program history to earn First Team honors together, joining Abbey Hsu and Kaitlyn Davis from the 2022-23 season. The First Team honors are the first of both Henderson's and Weiss's collegiate careers.
 
Senior Cecelia Collins was named Second Team All-Ivy League. This is the fourth Second Team selection of her collegiate career, earning two in the Patriot League at Bucknell and two in the Ivy League at Columbia.
 
Formerly the Ivy League Coach of the Year award, the newly named Ivy League Coaching Staff of the Year honors are the third straight for Griffith and Columbia. Despite losing last year's Ivy League Player of the Year and Columbia's all-time leading scorer, Abbey Hsu, to graduation, Griffith has guided the Lions to their first ever outright Ivy League Regular Season Championship and has her alma mater in position to qualify for its second straight NCAA Tournament. Columbia is 22-5 overall and tied the program record for Ivy wins with 13. They swept the season series from Princeton for the first time since 2008, received votes in both the AP Top 25 and Coaches Poll, hold a NET ranking of No. 41 and enter this weekend's Ivy League Tournament, presented by TIAA, as the No. 1 seed for the first time.
 
Henderson is Columbia's first Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year since Sara Yee in 2009-10, and just the second Lion to ever win the award. This season, her defensive numbers include 64 total steals, 2.4 steals per game, 166 total rebounds and 6.1 rebounds per game. She ranks No. 2 in the Ivy League in steals and No. 7 in rebounding. Across the 14-game Ivy slate, Henderson led the league with 39 total steals (2.8 per game) and ranked sixth in rebounding (6.2).
 
Adding to her laurels, Henderson ranks eighth in the Ivy League in scoring (13.5), is No. 2 among NCAA-qualified players in field goal percentage (.463) and leads the league with 137 total assists and an average of 5.1 assists per game. Her assists average ranks among the top 40 in the NCAA, while her 2.4 steals per game rank inside the top 50.
 
A native of the Sydney suburb of North Curl Curl, Australia, Henderson was named Ivy League Player of the Week four times this season. The Associated Press recognized her as an Honorable Mention National Player of the Week twice, while NCAA.com put Henderson in their Startling Lineup of the Week following her triple-double on February 28 against Brown.
 
Henderson is the winningest player in program history. She enters the Ivy League Tournament 98-25 (.797) in her Columbia career. She also ranks among the top 10 in several career categories, including No. 1 in assists (481), No. 2 in steals (180), No. 6 in points (1,302) and No. 8 in rebounds (677). In Ivy League history, Henderson is 10th in career assists and within 10 of the next three on the list.
 
Weiss earns First Team honors after averaging 18,0 points in 27 games and just shy of 19 points in the 14 Ivy League games. She ranked No. 2 in scoring in both categories. Nationally, the sophomore shooter ranks No. 7 in 3-pointers made per game (3.07), No. 15 in total threes (83) and top 100 in 3-point percentage (.372). All of those marks lead the Ivy League. Her scoring average is also top 50 in the country.
 
A native of nearby Hewlett, New York, Weiss was on fire in late January and through the month of February. She was named Ivy League Player of the Week three times in a five-week stretch. Following her career-high 34-point performance in Columbia's 64-60 victory at Princeton, she earned Ivy League Player of the Week, Met Basketball Writers Player of the Week, AP Honorable Mention, United States Basketball Writers Association Player of the Week honors, and was also named to the NCAA Starting Lineup of the Week.
 
Cecelia Collins was named Second Team All-Ivy League following a regular season in which she averaged 13.7 points, 5.8 rebounds, 4.6 assists and 1.4 steals. She ranked top 10 in all of those categories, including No. 2 in assists. A second-year Lion and native of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Collins led the Ivy League in assist/turnover ratio (2.09). Among NCAA-qualified players, she held the league's No. 1 field goal percentage (.502). Across the 14 Ivy League games, Collins bumped her averages up to 14.1 points and 5.9 rebounds.
 
The league also announced its Academic All-Ivy League selections. Henderson earned the nod for Columbia. The senior holds a 3.65 GPA as an economics major at Columbia College. Each of the Ivy League's eight member institutions gets one representative
 
Top-seeded Columbia will face fourth-seeded Penn (15-12, 6-8 Ivy) in the semifinals of the 2025 Ivy League Tournament, presented by TIAA. This year's tournament is being hosted by Brown at the Pizzitola Sports Center in Providence, Rhode Island. Friday's semifinal matchup is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. ET. The game can be seen live on ESPN+.
 
The winner of each semifinal will advance to the Ivy League Tournament Championship, which will take place Saturday, March 15, at 5:30 p.m. ET. The championship game will be televised nationally on ESPNU.
 
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