As we all know, basketball is a team sport and while awards such as "player of the year" or MVP are not as absurd as academy awards for acting (as if actors were actually competing with each other for these awards) they are particularly problematic in basketball and furthermore in D3 ball where perhaps only a very few would have actually seen the 50 possible "nominees".
Nonetheless, if awards are to be presented as such for a job well done then I can think of none more deserving the Flaherty.
A member of a particularly successful class, she helped bring Bowdoin up to four Elite 8's and one Final 2. She played in every game and became a starter in her freshman year after only a few games into the season. She isn't big, but was assigned a defensive role against the bigs on the other team and furthermore was a prolific rebounder and broke every record in scoring at Bowdoin with more than 1700 pts on a team that isn't known for its offense. She rose to play each game as the sun rises. She was a significant member of a class whose record was 112-9 over four years.
If awards like this one are to be given, who better than Flaherty should be singled out? 

The UAA is the toughest conference to play in, as much because of the travel situation as because of the teams that make up the conference. Two or three times per season a team will "fly" a considerable distance to play a game on Friday night and Sunday afternoon with often considerable travel between the Friday and Sunday game. I don't think any other conference challenges teams do to this. Yes, the NESCAC will often have teams play on Friday night and Saturday afternoon which is also a hardship, but these games don't involve air travel, though often they require hours of snow travel.
I would think that at some point in the future the UAA might want to consider whether it is worth it to continue as a conference because of the expense and the air travel.

NYU will be prepared for the UAA this season. They have improved each of the four games I've seen them play. This is the first team in a number of years where the entire team is committed to playing defense. They are physically strong and the coach can go ten deep. One never knows about how strong or weak the other teams in the UAA really are, because one rarely plays against a common foe pre-conference. But this squad has good chemistry and talented players. I predict they will be a force in their conference.