Senior Lady Lion Maggie Lucas has unsurprisingly been added to the pre-season Wade Watch list for the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) Player of the Year, an award that is also known as the “Heisman of Women’s Basketball.”

The WBCA Player of the Year award has been around for 37 years now and is named after the late Lily Margaret Wade, a three-time national champion coach at Delta State University. According to the WBCA website, “it is awarded annually to the greatest female basketball player in the country who not only excels athletically, but serves as a positive role model both on and off the court.” The last time a Penn Stater won the award was in 1992 when it was given to Susan Robinson.

Lucas made it to the Top 12 last year in the award’s voting but it eventually went to Baylor’s Brittney Griner for the second consecutive season. This year, Lucas is listed with the likes of players from UConn, Notre Dame, Nebraska, and Minnesota among others — all of which she and the Lady Lions will play against this season.

Lucas was the Big Ten Conference Player of the Year last season — just one of many accolades the Penn State’s best women’s basketball player earned in 2012. She tallied 20.1 points per game and enters the coming season with a chance to break Kelly Mazzante’s record for career three-pointers. In addition, Lucas had a .900 free throw percentage last season and was sixth in the Big Ten with 2.3 steals per game.

You can see Lucas and the Lady Lions in action starting November 8 as they kick off the season against St. Francis in the Bryce Jordan Center at 7 p.m.