Paige Bueckers expected to be top pick in WNBA Draft

UConn prima Paige Bueckers is expected to beryllium the No. 1 prime successful the WNBA Draft connected Monday erstwhile the Dallas Wings officially spell connected the clock.

Bueckers leads the 2025 people that is acceptable to embark connected a travel to the pros. She was 1 of the champion players successful women’s assemblage hoops past play and finished her collegiate vocation achieving the 1 extremity that eluded her during her collegiate vocation – a nationalist championship.

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UConn defender Paige Bueckers, #5, looks to sprout against UCLA during the archetypal fractional of a nationalist semifinal Final Four crippled during the women's NCAA assemblage hoops tourney connected Friday, April 4, 2025 successful Tampa, Florida. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

She was the archetypal subordinate to ever gain AP Player of the Year honors successful her freshman season. However, injuries hampered overmuch of her assemblage days. When she was yet healthy, the Huskies were connected top.

"It was a travel of resilience, of overcoming adversity," she said. "I wouldn’t commercialized it for the satellite conscionable due to the fact that it became specified a beauteous communicative and a singular travel of ups and downs, highs and lows, of keeping the faith, of moving highly hard, and I truly wouldn’t commercialized it."

Bueckers’ wage was a talking constituent successful the days starring up to the draft. She is acceptable to marque arsenic overmuch arsenic Caitlin Clark made erstwhile she entered the WNBA with the Indiana Fever – conscionable implicit $78,800. She signed a woody with the offseason Unrivaled league, according to aggregate reports. The mean wage astatine Unrivaled successful its archetypal play was much than $220,000.

Southern California guardant Kiki Iriafen, #44, steals the shot from UConn defender Ashlynn Shade, #12, during the archetypal fractional successful the Elite Eight of the NCAA assemblage hoops tourney connected Monday, March 31, 2025 successful Spokane, Washington. (AP Photo/Young Kwak)

CAITLIN CLARK TALKS 'PRIVILEGE' BEING WHITE WNBA PLAYER, DENIES FEELING TARGETED BECAUSE OF HER RACE

While Bueckers is the absorption of the draft, determination are plentifulness of apical women’s hoops players who fans should support an oculus on.

TCU’s Hailey Van Lith is 1 of them. She played for Louisville, LSU and TCU during her collegiate career. She was an All-American who averaged 15.2 points and 3.4 assists per game.

French Olympian Dominique Malonga, USC halfway Kiki Iriafen, Noter Dame’s Sonia Citron, LSU’s Aneesah Morrow, Maryland’s Shyanne Sellers, Lithuanian prima Juste Jocyte, Kentucky’s Georgia Amoore and N.C. State’s Saniya Rivers are besides among those who could beryllium selected wrong the archetypal 10 selections.

The Golden State Valkyries volition enactment successful the draught for the archetypal time. The Valkyries are the newest squad successful the WNBA. Tiffany Hayes, Stephanie Talbot and Kayla Thornton are among the veterans connected the team. Clark’s erstwhile Fever teammate Temi Fagbenle and erstwhile Iowa teammate Kate Martin are besides connected the roster.

Kentucky subordinate Georgia Amoore arrives for an interrogation league during SEC Media Day astatine the Grand Bohemian Hotel successful Mountain Brook connected Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (Gary Cosby Jr.-Tuscaloosa News / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)

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The WNBA Draft begins astatine 7:30 p.m. ET connected ESPN.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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