Monday night was WNBA Draft night. The event was hosted at Manhattan's Spring Studios New York and exclusively broadcast on ESPN. The league's 12 teams gathered to select the young collegiate stars they hope will become cornerstones of their franchise. The WNBA draft is comprised of three rounds and 36 total picks. 15 players were invited to attend the draft in person.
The 2023 Draft was one of the most hyped stagings in recent memory. Hours before it began, the league announced the expansion of charter flight use. Furthermore, the wealth of talent available had experts hailing the class' depth. However, this also led to the usual lamentations about the league's size, and thus the players who would go undrafted. The Indiana Fever held the first overall pick for the first time in franchise history.
WNBA Draft Provides Chaos And Surprises
The draft began as many experts had predicted. The Indiana Fever took South Carolina standout first overall and the Minnesota Lynx took Maryland star Diamond Miller second. Then the Dallas Wings, who initially held the third and fifth picks, managed to take three players in a row. The Wings selected Villanova's Maddy Siegrist third, immediately traded for the rights to Iowa State's Stephanie Soares when the Washington Mystics took her fourth, and then took UConn's Lou Lopez Senechal fifth. Dallas' aggressive moves aside, few mock drafts had Soares and Senechal going as high as the top five.
The surprises continued to come throughout the three-round draft. South Carolina's Brea Beal, projected to go at the end of the first round, fell to the end of the second. Angel Reese's teammate Alexis Morris also had to wait until the end of the second to hear her name called. However, by the end of the night, 36 players had been drafted. That included five from South Carolina alone, making the Gamecocks the third school (and fourth class overall) to see that many players drafted. Meanwhile, the Wings eventually ended the night with six total players, with four in the top-15. Eyes will now turn to May and the start of the 2023 WNBA season to see how this rookie class fares on the court.
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