MOLINE, Ill. — Drake sophomore Becca Hittner has been named the 2018 Jackie Stiles Missouri Valley Conference Women’s Basketball Player of the Year.

Hittner is the second-consecutive Bulldog player to be honored as MVC Player of the Year after Lizzy Wendell won the award in 2017. Earlier this week, Hittner was selected to the all-MVC first team for the second-consecutive season and joins Wendell as the only Bulldogs to earn all-MVC First Team honors in each of their first two seasons.

This season, Hittner started all 30 games for Drake and leads the MVC in three-point percentage at 44 percent. She also ranks second in scoring at 15.7 points per game and third in shooting percentage at 49.2 percent.

Hittner, last season’s MVC Freshman of the Year, raised her play to another level in league play this year. She led the conference in free throw percentage with an impressive 95.7 percent mark from the charity stripe and she led in three-point percentage at 50.7 percent. She narrowly ranked second in scoring at 16 points per game and was fourth in shooting percentage at 53.5 percent. She is the first MVC player to post 50-50-95 shooting numbers in league play in 15 seasons and she is currently No. 1 all-time in 3-point percentage at Drake with and No. 2 all-time in career free-throw percentage at 84.9 percent.

Hittner wasn’t the only Bulldog to earn MVC honors, as junior Sammie Bachrodt was named Defensive Player of the Year, sophomore Sara Rhine was selected the MVC Sixth Player of the Year and head coach Jennie Baranczyk was chosen the MVC Coach of the Year for the second-straight season.

Bachrodt is the first ever Drake player to be picked as Defensive Player of the Year. She was also selected to the all-MVC first team along with Hittner, improving on an honorable mention last season. Bachrodt is averaging 10.5 points, 4.0 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 2.0 steals per game while leading the conference in assists with 117 and finishing second in steals with 60.

Rhine played in 28 games this season, averaging 15.6 points per game to finish fourth in the MVC while shooting a conference-high 58.4 percent from the floor and pulling down 6 rebounds per game. Rhine’s second career MVC Sixth Player of the Year caps a week of multiple honors for her as she was named to her first all-MVC first team in her career as well.

Baranczyk guided Drake to its second-consecutive outright MVC regular season championship following the program’s second-straight 18-0 record. No Valley team had ever gone undefeated in one regular season of league action and Drake is now the only program to go unscathed in two MVC seasons. The Bulldog’s current 40-straight conference wins is an MVC record.

Baranczyk currently owns a 122-68 record as Drake’s head coach and is the third Bulldog head coach to be selected MVC Coach of the Year, along with Lisa Bluder — her college coach at the University of Iowa — and Lisa Stone.