Jo Leedham-Warner has won the Molten WBBL Player of the Year award for 2021-22, pacing a poll of WBBL Head Coaches, after leading London Lions to what is thus far a perfect season with a 33-0 record to date and a treble of the WBBL Championship, WBBL Cup and WBBL Trophy already secured. She now looks to complete the feat as Lions prepare for Sunday’s WBBL Play-off Final at The O2 Arena in front of a record crowd and live on Sky Sports.

With WBBL Head Coaches nominating their top three players, and points awarded for each position, the 34-year-old was the runaway winner with 35 points, 21 clear of Cat Carr in second and Brooklyn Pannell in third, as she was unanimously voted top by every single one of the twelve eligible coaches.

It is the first time that a London player has won the award, adding to an historic season of firsts for the club with it also being the first time they had won the WBBL Championship and WBBL Cup, as well as representing the country on the continent by reaching the knockout stages of the FIBA EuroCup Women, which included a famous victory over French powerhouse Tango Bourges, the eventual winners and Leedham-Warner’s former club.

She is the first British player to win this award since the WBBL’s inaugural season in 2014-15 when it was won by former Great Britain international Stephanie Gandy of Sheffield Hatters, with the last five winners all being American and the last, Cat Carr of the Sevenoaks Suns, being the only player to have won it twice. It’s fitting given that Lions assembled a squad of formidable British talent this season, with Leedham-Warner playing in her home country for the first time in an illustrious professional career that has spanned France, Poland, Turkey and the EuroLeague Women.

In her customary all-action style, her name is all over the WBBL leaderboards after she averaged 16 points, seven rebounds, five assists and three steals per game in the WBBL Championship, ranking first in the league in steals, first in field goal percentage (56%), second in three-point percentage (43%) and tenth in overall scoring.

That included four regular season double-doubles while averaging just under 26 minutes per game, with a near triple-double of 14 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists in a March victory over Durham Palatinates, while she recently had 17 points, eight rebounds, six assists and five steals against the same opponent in the Play-off quarter-finals. She had a season-high 27 points against Sheffield Hatters in the WBBL Cup quarter-final, 12 rebounds in a league win over Nottingham Wildcats in which she also had her season-high of seven steals, and 10 assists against Sevenoaks to end the regular campaign.

Perhaps most iconic, a play of the year contender came in the WBBL Trophy Final live on Sky Sports as she threw herself to the floor to grab a loose ball and assist a teammate with a pass over the back of her head, among 14 points, six rebounds and six assists in that game. She also had a double-double of 11 points and 11 rebounds in the BBL Cup Final victory over Newcastle Eagles at the Utilita Arena, Birmingham, in January.

It completes an award season sweep for Leedham-Warner, as she also featured in the Molten WBBL British Team of the Year, the Molten WBBL Defensive Team of the Year, and the Molten WBBL Team of the Year this week, and during the season she was the player who featured by far the most frequently in the weekly WBBL All-Star 5, doing so on 11 occasions as the only player in double-figures and four clear of anyone else.

She will now look to complete an ‘invincibles’ season as Lions face Sevenoaks Suns in a bid to make it 34-0 and a sweep of all four trophies, with the WBBL Play-off Final tipping-off at 13:15 live on Sky Sports Arena and YouTube from The O2 Arena this Sunday.