This weekend, four of the nation’s top collegiate women’s basketball teams will be making appearances in Tampa Bay, Florida, for the NCAA Tournament’s Final Four.
While these programs and their athletes are focused on this weekend’s upcoming games, the world of women’s basketball is already swarming with talk about next week’s WNBA Draft.
The 2019 WNBA draft will take part on Wednesday, April 10 — just three days after the championship game in Tampa Bay.
In advance of the draft, the WNBA hosted its 2019 Pre-Draft media conference call on Tuesday morning to allow media outlets to talk to both WNBA analysts and coaches about the big-time decision the nation’s top collegiate players and WNBA programs will have to make within the upcoming week.
The coaches could not answer questions about Oregon’s junior guard, Sabrina Ionescu, due to the fact that questions about “collegiate underclassmen” were not allowed.
Here is what coaches said about senior guard Maite Cazorla:
“I like Maite a lot. Obviously, Sabrina [Ionescu] gets a lot of the attention, but I think Maite is one of those players that literally on any basketball team she would have an impact. Just high-IQ and that adds a lot of value to a lot of successful teams. I think she has a bright future. I don’t know where she’ll fall in terms of the draft, but for us we have [picks] 7, 19 and 31. So, she is definitely on our radar.” — Derek Fisher, Los Angeles Sparks Head Coach
Las Vegas Aces, President of Basketball and head coach Bill Laimbeer said Cazorla was not his radar.
ESPN women’s basketball analyst Kara Lawson spoke about the impact of Ionescu, and Notre Dame’s junior Jackie Young, potentially entering the draft a year early:
“It completely changes it because Ionescu and Young are in the conversation at the top, maybe not at the No. 1 for Young. So, I think it changes everything. The thing it changes the most, I think, is how happy teams are, if they both come in, that are maybe at the seven or eights or nine or 10 (picks) because the more players there are in the draft, the more it pushes talent down the board. Those two players are in the conversation at the top-five, in my opinion, and one or both of them entering the draft changes the whole draft.”
On Monday, Ionescu was recognized as a first-team all-American by the Associated Press for the second consecutive year. She is averaging 19.9 points, 7.5 rebounds and 8.2 assists per game this season.
In Oregon’s Elite Eight victory over Mississippi State on Sunday, she propelled the Ducks with 31 points, seven rebounds and eight assists against the Bulldogs, whose center, Teaira McCowan, was also named a first-team all-American as well.
The No. 2 Oregon Ducks are officially on their way to Tampa Bay, Flordia, for the program’s first-ever Final Four appearance. The Ducks will take on the No. 1 Baylor Bears Friday at 4 p.m. PST at the Amalie Arena.
Follow Maggie Vanoni on Twitter @maggie_vanoni
