Transfer Talk And WNBA Discourse
Playing catch up after a month away
Hello! I’m back after a quiet May and ready to return to talking ball.
We are going to ease back into the swing of things with a hodgepodge of talking points I’ve wanted to circle back to involving Big Ten women’s basketball. Thank you for all of your various levels of patience, but I won’t waste any more of your time.
New Big Ten Teams Make Noise
As has been touched on here, the Big Ten will be expanding to 18 teams in all sports next year. Women’s basketball is going to be one of the very top sports for those new teams to immediately win a trophy.
The 14 teams I’ve covered on here for years still have plenty to be excited about in their own right, and one of them still could be the Big Ten champ here in 2024-25, but none of them will be the favorite entering the season. Or the second pick.
Those spots are going to be taken by UCLA and USC in whichever order you would like. That was probably the case the day the NCAA Tournament ended, but it’s only grown more solid based on the happenings in the transfer portal.
The Trojans are the most clear winners of the portal, making up for some solid graduates and departures by signing Kiki Iriafen from Stanford and Talia von Oelhoffen from Oregon State. Iriafen (19.4 PPG, 11.0 RPG) was a menace for the Cardinal alongside Cameron Brink, while von Oelhoffen (10.7 PPG, 4.1 RPG, 5.0 APG) did a little bit of everything on a terrific Beavers team. Both are outrageous talents on their own, but pair them with Juju Watkins and USC feels beyond terrifying.
Did I mention USC also has three incoming five-star freshmen all ranked in the Top 16 on ESPN? Any potential depth concerns can be quickly wiped away by the additions of Kennedy Smith, Kayleigh Heckel and Avery Howell who should be able to make an impact right away.
UCLA is scary in a slightly different way: The Bruins have barely rocked the boat and still are adding a plethora of new talent. Charisma Osborne’s graduation marks the only key member of the rotation that will not be back, and yet UCLA has still swung and hit big in the portal.
Similar to the Trojans. UCLA found portal success by picking on its former Pac-12 foes, landing longtime Washington State star Charlisse Leger-Walker, who has tallied at least 13 PPG, 5 RPG, 2.8 APG and 1 SPG all four seasons of her collegiate career, as well as Oregon State’s Timea Gardiner (11.6 PPG, 7.0 RPG).
If that wasn’t good enough, UCLA also grabbed Janiah Barker from Texas A&M (12.2 PPG, 7.6 RPG). That’s three excellent pieces that all should fit well into UCLA’s well-balanced style of attack. Oh yeah, and like USC, UCLA has a trio of incoming freshmen ranked in the top 30 overall.
Those are the two incoming juggernauts, but Oregon and Washington are headed into the conference as well. The Huskies have been quiet, but the Ducks have been anything but.
Oregon has seen five players leave and *seven* new faces arrive through the portal, so at the least the Ducks will be worth watching simply to see how it all works out. The highlight of the gets was North Carolina star Deja Kelly, a high-volume shooter who has averaged over 16 PPG three straight seasons. She’s a solid playmaker and defender, but has also never shot above 37.3% in her collegiate career, so Oregon will likely have to work around both her strengths and weaknesses as a lead scorer.
I have no idea what to expect from Oregon, and the most recent history would suggest not good things. But Kelly was a massive get that many did not anticipate, and maybe it is a sign of some growth in the program that has been mostly lacking since the Sabrina Ionescu era.
One more quick transfer note I wanted to include that intrigued me last month: Purdue. This was always going to be a big rebuilding year for the program with Abbey Ellis, Jeanae Terry and Caitlyn Harper departing, but that was made clear when Co-Big Ten Freshman of the Year Mary Ashley Stevenson transferred to Stanford.
Katie Geralds has instilled a lot of life back into this program, but bouncing back from last year’s struggles is pivotal with a newer group, and I have really liked some of the adds Purdue has made to start that build. Reagan Bass (16.4 PPG, 9.9 RPG) is an experienced forward who dominated at Akron and should slot in well where Harper has been. Destini Lombard (9.7 PPG, 4.1 APG, 2.6 SPG) also showcased a lot of the pesky guard behaviors that could make her a great Terry replacement.
The transfer add I’m most interested by, however, is Ella Collier. Why? Well at the NAIA level, she was a four-time All-American and a National Player of the Year winner. She is a career 50/40/90 shooter at Marian, and in fact has reached those percentages every single year she has been in college. I don’t care what level you play at, that is unconscious shooting for any span of time, let alone for a whole college career.
I’m not sure Collier will average a 50/40/90 in the Big Ten, but I do expect her to come in and immediately be a new matchup issue for opponents to deal with. What a cool signing for Purdue, and hopefully a sign that positive things are coming.
Please Be Normal About Caitlin Clark
I unfortunately feel an obligation to reiterate this.
Caitlin Clark is an immensely popular basketball player who, because of her unique, electrifying skills, helped to lead new faces to watching women’s basketball and was ultimately a catalyst for bringing those same new faces to watch the WNBA. I imagine that’s all well agreed upon, but from here it has devolved into a toxic wasteland.
Where’s the discourse machine even at as of right now, June 3rd, 2024? Clark has had some rough games (1/10 in a blowout loss on Sunday) and some standout ones (30-5-6-3-3 against the Sparks). On the whole, Clark has averaged 15.6 PPG, 5.1 RPG, 6.4 APG through her first 11 games.
Clark’s been less efficient (35.7 FG%) and more turnover prone (5.4 per game) than she was at Iowa. But she has also consistently chipped in across the box score and plays for an Indiana Fever team that’s extremely young, has been lackluster for a long time, and is led by a coach that I would not rank among my personal top 10 in the WNBA.
You know what all of that sounds like to me? It sounds like an extremely talented player dealing with all of the struggles that come with being a No. 1 pick. The talent level has risen, she joined the previously worst team in the WNBA, and somehow Clark hasn’t turned them into a finals contender overnight? Guess it’s time to fire off some heinous takes in all directions!
There’s been discourse on the contact Clark has faced. There’s discourse on if the WNBA should have made the Fever’s schedule easier to help Clark out. Discourse on other W players treating Clark too harshly. Discourse on truly everything surrounding Caitlin Clark, on or off the court. It’s exhausting.
My thoughts on the main talking points would be something like this:
WNBA players don’t owe Clark grace for bringing new eyes to the league. That doesn’t put a burden on everyone else to “be nicer” to her, and it seems like the players have mostly been fine surrounding Clark. It feels so condescending for people to be asking for this so much
That being said, the Chennedy Carter debacle is embarrassing and the worst individual case that Clark has been taking more contact than necessary. I know Clark was yapping at her in the game, the hit itself was a flagrant, but nothing I hadn’t seen before. But it was Carter’s postgame rants on various social medias that told me there’s more hate in that hit than what was in the game, and there’s just no need to take it there
The Indiana Fever’s schedule to start the season (11 games in 19 days) is insane. Like that’s not really a Clark point, but how the hell did that happen WNBA? Some teams have played six times and Indiana has ELEVEN games played??
I was already planning on talking about this, then Pat McAfee said this. I guess that’s truly where the discourse is as of June 3, being able to say that on ESPN to millions of people.
I do not enjoy any of Pat McAfee’s schtick anywhere, so I won’t pretend to be neutral here. But this absolutely sucks. At least some of the early takes were rooted in the sport itself, and I could pass some of what continued off as the same terrible slop I see for the NBA and NFL. But words like what Pat said in that clip above are garbage and take this way out of what the sport is about.
Watch the WNBA. Watch the Indiana Fever. Watch Caitlin Clark. Make your opinions on what she, or the Fever, need to improve to get to the postseason. Take a little more than one quarter of her first ever season in the WNBA to decide if she’s a bust or not. But we as a collective have to stop talking about all of this other nonsense before it becomes even more like what the punter guy said.
Photo Credit: Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever), Twitter/X
If you are interested in more Big Ten women’s basketball content like this, you can subscribe with the button at the top or bottom of the post, or share it with the button below. Thanks!
Why decline to acknowledge the reality that the treatment given Clark to date by WNBA referees and players has left A LOT to be desired. It negatively reflects upon the WNBA and if continued will alienate those new to the conference. Clark should not be singled for either favorable or adverse play. She certainly has gotten the short end of the stick so far. Resentment is not pretty!