Kelly earned first-team honors, while Zaragoza was selected to the third team.
Kelly has already been recognized this fall as a preseason All-American by Street & Smith's, and was named as one of the 25 preseason candidates for the 2006 Wade Trophy which is presented to the Division I National Player of the Year. Just halfway through her career,
Kelly already stands 14th on WKU's career scoring list with 1,266 points. She also became the fastest player in school history to reach 1,000 points, hitting the mark in just 51 games. She scored 687 points last season, which set a new WKU sophomore scoring record and was the third-best season total in school history.
Kelly averaged 20.2 points and pulled down 8.5 rebounds per game last season, ranking second in the Sun Belt in scoring and fourth in rebounding. She also led the league with a .601 field-goal percentage on her way to being a first-team all-conference selection for the second straight year.
She has already broken some of the WKU records set by Olmstead's Lillie Mason 20 years ago and is threatening many more.
Zaragoza is being honored by the league for the first time in her career after she took over as WKU's starting point guard last year as a junior. She broke a 21-year-old school record with 15 assists in an early-season win over Tennessee Tech.
Zaragoza enters her senior season with 295 assists, needing just 40 more to crack into WKU's career top 10. She became a consistent scoring threat for the Lady Toppers late in the season, scoring in double figures in eight of WKU's final 15 games of the season- averaging 11.6 points per game during that span.
Zaragoza finished the year ranked sixth in the Sun Belt in assists, averaging 3.88 assists per game. Her 1.23 assist-to-turnover ratio was also fifth best in the league.
Both Zaragoza and Kelly were major contributors to a Lady Topper offense that averaged 73.8 points per game- best in the SBC and ranked 17th in the nation.
WKU joined Arkansas State, Middle Tennessee and Arkansas-Little Rock as the only teams to place multiple players on the preseason all-conference team. MTSU senior guard Chrissy Givens was selected as the preseason Player of the Year.
In addition, the Lady Toppers were picked by the league coaches to finish second in the Sun Belt East Division behind three-time defending tournament champion Middle Tennessee. WKU- which has won at least a share of the division title each of the past four seasons-earned
three first-place votes and 67 total points, while the Blue Raiders picked up nine first-place votes and 74 points.
The Sun Belt also released their television schedule for the upcoming season. The Lady Toppers' game at Middle Tennessee on Dec. 27 will be shown on ESPN Regional. In all, 11 Lady Topper games will be televised this season as the Hilltopper Sports Satellite Network will air nine
games and WHAS in Louisville will air WKU's meeting with U of L on Dec. 9.
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