North Carolina State University Athletics
Johnson, Rivers Earn ACC Honors Following 2022-23 Regular Season
2/28/2023 5:07:00 PM | Women's Basketball
Johnson named to All-ACC Second Team, Rivers honored as Sixth Player of the Year
GREENSBORO, N.C. – Wolfpack women's basketball was represented by junior Diamond Johnson and sophomore Saniya Rivers on this year's list of Atlantic Coast Conference postseason honors. Johnson was honored as a member of the All-ACC Second Team for the 2022-23 campaign, and Rivers was named ACC Sixth Player of the Year.
The all-conference designation marks the second of Johnson's career but her first as a member of the Wolfpack. She was previously an All-Big Ten honoree in 2021 before joining NC State's program.
The Wolfpack has now claimed the ACC Sixth Player of the Year award following three-straight seasons. Rivers joins Johnson (2021-22) and Jada Boyd (2020-21) in that streak, and NC State is just the second ACC program to win the award three consecutive times.
A native of Philadelphia, Johnson leads the 2022-23 Wolfpack team in scoring (12.3 ppg), assists (3.5 apg) and three-point percentage (.362). She is one of just two players on the team to post multiple 20+ point outings, with her best performance of the season coming in the form of a 22-point outing to take down 10th-ranked Iowa on the road in December. Johnson let her prolific three-point shooting ability shine this year, hitting 4+ threes in four games and 3+ threes in eight games.
Johnson has played in 22 games this season and scored in double figures in 15 of those. Her scoring average ranked 17th among all players in the league, and her assist average ranked ninth to go along with an assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.71 that ranked sixth among ACC players. Johnson had three or more assists in 15 games, highlighted by a season-high mark of seven against Vanderbilt. To go with her recognition, Johnson was also on the midseason watch list for 2023 Naismith Women's Player of the Year and on the late season list for the 2023 Dawn Staley Award.
Rivers leads the team in multiple statistical categories of her own including rebounds (5.1), steals (1.9) and blocks (1.0). She put together those numbers while also averaging 8.9 points per game. Rivers' overall steals average ranked ninth in the ACC, but she bumped that average up to 2.2 per game in league action which ranked third.
The Wilmington, N.C., native scored 10+ points in eight ACC contests this season and also had a career night at Iowa with 22 points, five assists and four steals. Rivers became no stranger to stellar games as the guard went on to tally eight steals against Boston College later in the season, the most for a member of the team since 1998.
NC State earned the No. 8 seed at the upcoming 2023 Ally ACC Women's Basketball Tournament and opens postseason play in Greensboro, N.C., on Thursday, March 2 at 2 p.m. The Wolfpack will take on No. 9 seed Syracuse in its first game of the tournament, and the contest will be televised nationally on the ACC Network.
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