FOREST, Va. – Anna Giannopoulou (Athens, Greece) was selected as the Old Dominion Athletic Conference/Virginia Farm Bureau Scholar-Athlete of the Year, and as an All-ODAC First Team selection while Briahna Scott (Graham, N.C.) joined her on the All-ODAC Second Team to represent the Guilford College women's basketball team in ODAC postseason awards, as announced by the conference offices on Thursday afternoon.

Individually, Giannopoulou becomes just the second Quaker ever to be named the league's most balanced player on-and-off the court in women's hoops as the recipient of the Scholar-Athlete of the Year award, joining A.J. Robertson who received the honor for the 2003-04 campaign. An incredibly balanced field of all-conference first teamers this season, all-six members of the All-ODAC First Team hailed from separate schools this season for the first time since 2021-22. The Quakers are one of six squads to land multiple all-conference selections paced by Bridgewater College, Randolph-Macon College, and Washington & Lee University who had three honorees each. GC is one of five programs in the league with at minimum a tandem of selections on the second team or higher with this season being the fourth in-a-row in which Guilford has had a pair of all-conference picks.

Giannopoulou makes a triumphant return to the All-ODAC First Team after never finding a rhythm her junior year, and it is tremendously well-deserved as one of the league and nation's most-productive forwards. Finishing as Guilford's top bucket-getter, scoring 15.6 points per game, ranked sixth in the league and 125^th in the nation at the regular season's conclusion, the senior showcased strong efficiency with nationally-ranked marks for field goal percentage and free throw percentage, finishing 144^th with a .440 conversion rate from the field while connecting at a .748 clip at the line, slotted 172^nd in Division-III. She also crashed the glass as GC's leading rebounder, collecting 9.2 total boards per game, sixth-best in the league and 96^th-best in the nation while particularly thriving at finishing defensive possessions, with her 7.2 defensive caroms finishing fourth in the conference and 53^rd in D-III. Giannopoulou made her presence most-felt around the rim, though, where she concluded the regular season slotted 14^th in the country with 60 total blocks and 16^th in blocks per game, at 2.40, topping the league by six swats overall and 0.15 per game. The Greek forward excelled in ODAC play, maintaining her 9.2 caroms per game and rank of sixth in the league in that category, but elevating her scoring and shot-blocking, sending back 2.5 shots per game, over half a block more than anyone else in the league, while elevating her scoring to 16.8 points, the fourth-most in the conference. She was named the ODAC's Defensive Player of the Week five times including three throughout the league's conference schedule with both her career weekly honors total of six, and season total of five standing as the most in program history and the highlight of a season and career that ranks exceptionally well in the record books at both the season and career levels. Returning to the All-ODAC First Team after a one-year gap, Giannopoulou joins pretty illustrious company as the program's 11^th three-time All-ODAC honoree and the sixth to earn first team commendations multiple times with the last Quaker to achieve these feats being her former, Lindsay Gauldin '23.

Off the court, Giannopoulou is equally impressive, recording a 3.79 GPA as a double-major studying both Biology and Health Sciences at Guilford. Striving to pursue a career in veterinary, she has served internships with Long Animal Hospital, Northeast Animal Hospital, and Caroline Waterfowl Preserve while volunteering with Red Feather Equine Sanctuary: Horse Rescue and Karystos Animal Welfare Association.

A huge surge in the second half of league play swiftly elevated Scott from fringe all-conference pick to a no-doubt All-ODAC Second Team selection this year. Through eight league contests, the junior averaged 10.6 points per game for GC before excelling through the second half of the conference slate netting just-short of 17 tallies per game at 16.9 and sneaking into the national top-200 for total points with 353 at the end of the regular season. She finished ninth in the league in scoring average at 14.1 tallies on .370/.253/.756 while adding 4.0 total rebounds, including 1.9 on the offensive end and 62 assists, the second-most on the team and 10^th-most in the league. A steady shooter from the line, making her tries at a .756 rate, she finished sixth in the league in free throw percentage and fifth in both attempts and makes as her 90 total made free throws ranked 84^th in Division-III. Like her colleague in the Quaker frontcourt, Scott was most-impactful defensively, albeit in a different manner. The pride of Graham finished atop the conference ranks in both total steals and steals per game with 70 takeaways overall and 2.7 per contest, besting the field by five overall steals and 0.2 per game. With her aforementioned surge in the back-half of the league slate, Scott finished ODAC play fairly on-par with her nonconference figures, netting 13.8 points and 2.5 steals while shooting .366/.234/.757 for GC. The latest in a lengthy track record of program success, Scott, helps extend the women's basketball program's run of consecutive seasons with a player named to the All-ODAC Second Team or above to 26-straight dating back to the turn of the century.

Following a bit of a down 2024-25 season that saw GC hover around .500, the Quakers returned to form this winter finishing 18-8 and with their third campaign with at-least that many overall wins in the last four years under Head Coach Sarah Mathews. Guilford finished with a winning ODAC record for the fourth-straight year at 9-7, claiming the fifth seed and taking Shenandoah University down to the wire, though they were eliminated in the ODAC Quarterfinals.

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