Wiedie also earned Missouri Valley Conference Coach of the Year honors last week prior to advancing his team to its third MVC Tournament Championship Game. ISU earned the No. 1 seed at the State Farm Missouri Valley Conference Tournament in Springfield, Mo. Indiana State racked up a school-record 18 victories in a row this year, including a 10-game win spurt at Hulman Center. In the regular season finale against Evansville, the Sycamores drew a school-record 6,328 fans to Hulman Center. This season, Indiana State earned its first-ever outright Missouri Valley Conference Championship.

The Sycamores have led the nation in cumulative grade point average following two of the past three seasons. ISU has finished in the nation’s top three in each of the past four years.

Also earning WBCA Regional Coach of the Year honors were Rutgers’ C. Vivian Stringer (Region 1), North Carolina’s Sylvia Hatchell (Region 2), Tennessee’s Pat Summitt (Region 3), Bowling Green’s Curt Miller (Region 4), Oklahoma’s Sherri Coale (Region 5), New Mexico’s Don Flanagan (Region 7), and Arizona State’s Chari Thorne (Region 8).

The winners are selected through a two-level process. The first level is by region, in which coaches from each WBCA geographical region vote for their respective top coach. If a coach has been selected as Regional Coach of the Year, they advance as a finalist to the national level of the selection process along with the other Regional Coaches of the Year in their respective division. The number of coaches varies depending on affiliation.

The winners of the WBCA National Coach of the Year for each division will be honored on Tuesday, April 4 at 12 p.m. (EST) during the RUSSELL ATHLETIC/WBCA Coach of the Year Luncheon in the Hynes Convention Center Ballroom, which is part of the 2006 WBCA National Convention.