NEW YORK -- Villanova received a pair of the 2025-26 BIG EAST Team Academic Excellence awards on Tuesday morning with women's lacrosse earning the honor for their sport while women's basketball tied for the top squad in that category. 

Each year, the BIG EAST Conference recognizes the league's top-performing teams in the classroom across each of its 22 sponsored sports. The awards are presented annually to the team in each conference-sponsored sport that records the highest cumulative grade point average. 

Women's lacrosse picked up the accolade for the first time in program history, posting a 3.570 GPA to top the conference's seven women's lacrosse teams. Villanova WLAX was also named an IWLCA Academic Honor Squad for the sixth straight year, 10 'Cats picked up Division I Academic Honor Roll and Emma Verhoest was chosen for both the Academic All-Area and Academic All-District teams. 

The women's basketball team split this year's accolade with DePaul, tying at a grade point average of 3.528 for the year. It's also the first time since the beginning of the award in 2009-10 that Villanova WBB has been the recipient. Brynn McCurry was tabbed an Academic All-District member, and she along with Maggie Grant and Annie Welde were part of VU's inaugural chapter of the Chi Alpha Sigma academic honor society.

This is the first of the BIG EAST academic awards to be announced this year, with more to come in the following weeks.