The Samford athletics department held its third-annual SAMSPY Awards Thursday evening at The Wynfrey hotel in Hoover.
The SAMSPY Awards are held to honor Samford’s student-athletes, teams, coaches and administrators for their accomplishments throughout the year.
For the third year in a row, the ceremony was hosted by Jim Dunaway from CBS 42 and WJOX’s The Roundtable, and Ryan Brown of The Roundtable.
A total of 23 awards were given out at the event. The first awards were the Team Academic Awards. These awards were given to the teams, one male and one female, that posted the highest grade-point average in the past year. The tennis teams swept the Team Academic Awards, with both the men’s and women’s teams earning their respective honors.
The Jim Griffin Award for the Supporting Player of the Year was given to Jazmine Powers of the women’s basketball team. Powers played a key role coming off the bench for the Bulldogs this season. She provided a spark with her defense in several games on the way to the program’s first Southern Conference title and NCAA Tournament appearance.
Paige Anderson of the women’s basketball team won the award for the Play of the Year. With second-seeded Samford trailing top-seeded Appalachian State by two points in the SoCon title game, Anderson hit a three-pointer with 18 seconds to go, giving the Bulldogs the lead for good on their way to a 57-54 win. The victory gave the program its first SoCon title and first bid to the NCAA Tournament.
The Best Female Athlete Award was given to Emily London of the women’s basketball program. London was named the SoCon Player of the Year by the SoCon Sports Media Association. She led the nation in free-throw percentage and ranked second in the nation in three-point field goal percentage. London also led the team to its first SoCon title and NCAA Tournament appearance.
The women’s basketball team’s historic win over Appalachian State for the SoCon title also earned the team the Best Championship Performance Award.
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