PIKEVILLE, Ky.  – With the conclusion of basketball season comes the announcement of many postseason awards and this year Pikeville College student-athletes and a coach were ranked high among the honorees.

Kelly Wells was named Rawlings-NAIA Coach of the Year after guiding the Bears to an improbable title of the Buffalo Funds-NAIA Division I Men's Basketball National Championship.

Wells led the Bears to the first 30-win season in school history and in the national tournament became the first team to win the event by beating five seeded teams along the way. The Bears beat five of the top nine teams in the tournament en route to the crown, including the defending national champion in the opener and the No. 1 seed in Robert Morris University.

It was the second time in his career Wells has been nationally honored. He was named the national coach of the year by the high school coaches association while at Mason County.

His record of 105-56 gives him the third most wins in school history in men's basketball and lands him fifth on total basketball wins in only five years at the helm of the Bears.

Senior guard Vance Cooksey was named a Second-Team All-American by the NAIA.

The 6-0 point guard led the Mid-South Conference with an average of 18.73 points per game. He was second in assists at 5.05 and steals with 2.24 per game and finished fourth in field-goal percentage, hitting 46.9 percent.

The Chicago native scored 693 points this season with was second in the country. His total of 83 steals was good for third and his 187 assists finished sixth. He was in the Top 50 in the country in six different categories.

Senior Natiera Hinton was named Honorable-Mention All-American.

Hinton was in the nation's Top 20 in scoring with an average of 17.6 points per game. She finished fourth in the Mid-South with 2.57 steals and 1.18 blocks per game and was fifth in rebounding, pulling down 8.11 per game.

Her total of 1,763 points puts her fifth on the women's basketball all-time scoring list.

Two members of the women's basketball team were named to the 2011 Daktronics NAIA Division I Women's Basketball Scholar-Athletes team. In order to be nominated by an institution's head coach, a student-athlete must maintain a minimum grade-point average of 3.5 on a 4.0 scale and must have achieved a junior academic status to qualify for this honor.

Among the picks is senior Whitney Compton. In addition to making the team while playing both basketball and softball, she will graduate in May with a triple major of communication, English and religion.

Junior Megan Mosley was also on the academic team, majoring in education.

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