In the WBBL End of Year Awards, Suns snatched two incredible recognitions; Head Coach Len Busch was named Molten WBBL Coach of the Year and Suns WBBL Captain Cat Carr was voted Molten WBBL Player of the Year.
HEAD COACH OF THE YEAR: LEN BUSCH:
After Sevenoaks Suns won the WBBL Championship for the third completed season in a row, Head Coach Len Busch has been voted by his peers as the Molten WBBL Coach of the Year for 2020-21. Amazingly, it is the fourth successive time that he was won this accolade, as the only coach to win it more than once since the inception of the WBBL in 2014.
Suns finished the regular season campaign with an excellent record of 19-1, after winning 18 straight games in league play between mid-September and the end of April – that resulted in Busch twice winning the Molten WBBL Coach of the Month. The decisive victory came at the end of that run, beating second-placed Leicester Riders 63-51 at home, holding Riders to just six second quarter points and 10 in the fourth, keeping their nearest rival to the lowest points tally of their season.
Amazingly, that 95% winning percentage isn’t even the best that they have achieved under Busch’s stewardship, as it matched their record of 2017-18 and was second to their perfect 22-0 campaign in 2018-19. That success has been built on consistency, with the majority of players returning including Cat Carr, Ta’Yani Clark, Renee Busch, Janice Monakana and Irene Garrido-Perez, joined by the astute signing of Lavinia Da Silva from London Lions.
PLAYER OF THE YEAR: CAT CARR
After captaining Sevenoaks Suns to a third straight WBBL Championship title, Cat Carr has been recognised with the Molten WBBL Player of the Year award, winning a poll of WBBL Head Coaches. It is the second time that she has won this accolade in the six completed seasons since the WBBL’s inception, adding this to 2017-18, and she becomes the first player to have won it more than once.
The American has been an ever-present for Suns in that time, after a glittering college career in which she finished as the all-time leading scorer at Holy Family University, an achievement which led to her being inducted into the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference Hall of Fame in 2019.
In this campaign, amazingly, the do-it-all guard was in the WBBL’s top three in points per game (third, 18.8), assists (second, 7.2) and defensive rebounds (second, 7.7), leading the league champions in each of those categories; while her field goal percentage of 47.8% was also top 10 in the league. In her seven seasons of campaigning in the WBBL, the rebounds and assists numbers are career highs, and her scoring trails only that inaugural 2014-15 season when she averaged 20 points per game.
Scoring in double-figures in all but one contest, peaking at 29 points against Essex Rebels, she had 10 double-doubles on the season and two triple-doubles, both during the title run in, including 20 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists, also against Rebels.
With coaches nominating their top three players, and points awarded for each position, Carr won the award by seven points ahead of Kennedy Leonard of London Lions, as she was voted in first place by seven of the ten WBBL Head Coaches, and in one of the top three spots by all of them.