Six Spartans Earn All-Big Ten Honors

East Lansing, Mich. — The Big Ten has introduced its annual postseason awards, and MSU had six gamers honored:   Junior  Kennedy Bell earned Forward of the Year honors along with being a unanimous First Team All Big Ten choice.  Joining Bell on the primary workforce had been Emerson Sargeant, Kayla Briggs, and Maggie Illig; Bella Najera was a Second Team honoree and Remini Tillotson was MSU’s choice for the Big Ten Sportsmanship Award.

Sargeant, Illig, and Najera are all repeat All-B1G honorees.  Sargeant (2023) and Illig (2024) had been beforehand second workforce picks, whereas Najera was named the 2023 league Freshman of the Year along with being a 3rd workforce decide in each 2023 and 2024.  Transfers Bell and Briggs earned their first postseason B1G honors in 2025.   MSU’s 5 All-Big Ten honorees matches this system’s all-time greatest for variety of general All-Big Ten picks in a season, set in 2022.  A complete of 18 gamers have earned All-Big Ten postseason picks within the final 5 years underneath Hosler.

Bell is MSU’s second-ever Big Ten Forward of the Year, together with 2022 choice Lauren DeBeau.  In 2008, Laura Heyboer was the Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year, (which was not restricted to a selected place).

Bell, who got here to the Spartans after two seasons at Maryland, was additionally on the Missouri Athletic Club’s Hermann Trophy Midseason Watch List.  She is the Big Ten chief in targets (10, forty third NCAA), and her 25 factors leads the B1G and is forty fourth nationally.    In Conference video games solely, Bell led the Spartans and the B1G with 16 factors, and was second in targets (6) and assists (4). Her 10 targets ranks in a tie for seventeenth in MSU’s all-time single season data – essentially the most targets for a Spartan since DeBeau had 11 in 2022.  Her 25 factors is twenty first all-time in a single season.

Bell performed totally on the again line for the Terrapins to start her collegiate profession.  Through 19 video games, Bell has greater than tripled her three profession targets that she scored in two seasons at Maryland. With 25 factors, she can be approaching tripling her profession complete getting into 2025 (9).

Briggs had the lone objective in MSU’s quarterfinal win over Northwestern final Sunday.  She owns the workforce lead in assists (7, second B1G),which can be 18^th all-time in a single season within the Spartan file e book.  Her 5-7-17 scoring line in 2025 ranks in a tie for ninth within the league in factors – it additionally matches her two-year profession complete from Providence.  She additionally shares the workforce lead (with Sargeant) for game-winning targets (3), which ranks fifth within the Big Ten.

Najera is tied for second on the workforce in targets (5) with Briggs and Sargeant, and is third on the workforce with 15 factors.  Of her 5 targets on the yr, two have stood as game-tying tallies and one as a game-winner.  She is steadily climbing among the many all-time scoring leaders in program historical past.  She has 58 profession factors, tied with Leasa Klix (1986-88) and Jamie Cheslik (2014-17) for thirteenth within the Spartan annals.  Her 22 profession targets finds her alone in 14th place among the many Spartan objective scorers, and she or he is tied for twentieth in profession assists (14).   Her 58 profession factors ranks seventh amongst energetic Big Ten gamers.

Sargeant is a superb comeback story, returning to the sector to earn Second Team All-Big Ten kudos for the second time – she earned the honour in 2023  however suffered a season-ending damage in early 2024.  She has surpassed her profession greatest with 5 targets this season, the newest the lone rating in a 1-0 win on the highway at Nebraska (10/26), her team-best third game-winning objective of the season.  With three assists to go together with her 5 factors, she has posted 13 factors this yr – one  level shy of her profession greatest set in 2023.     She has 16 profession assists, which ties her for fifteenth all-time within the MSU file e book, together with Jamie Cheslik (2014-17), Lauren Hill (2006-09), and Leah Hutko (1993-96).

Illig had one objective in every of her first three collegiate seasons however has matched that profession objective complete together with her three scores (and added an help) this season, and with seven factors is near matching her profession scoring line via her first three faculty seasons mixed (3-4-10).   She was essentially the most embellished Spartan within the pre-season, incomes a spot on the Hermann Trophy Watch List, the United Soccer Coaches Defenders to Watch, and was among the many Big Ten Players to Watch.  In addition to her  Second Team All-Big Ten honors a yr in the past, she was additionally a United Soccer Coaches All-Region decide.

Tillotson, MSU’s Big Ten Sportsmanship Award winner, scored her first objective as a Spartan when she transformed a penalty kick towards USC (9/21).  It was additionally the primary PK for her in her collegiate profession.  She has appeared in all 19 video games, logging helpful, growing minutes over the current stretch for the Spartans.  She has began MSU’s final two video games vs. Northwestern and Nebraska.   Over the final seven video games, she has averaged 50 minutes of taking part in time, together with a season-high of 74 vs. Northwestern within the Big Ten quarterfinals.