As Sarah Sturdy dominated the South Carolina frontcourt throughout UConn’s nationwide championship victory, gobbling up rebounds, defending the rim and scoring from in all places on the court docket, it was straightforward to think about her additionally doing so on the subsequent degree. WNBA executives needed to be drooling over the concept of drafting the subsequent Huskies star.
However they’ll have to attend one other three years. Below the collective bargaining settlement, which expires on the finish of the 2025 season, American-born gamers are eligible to be drafted after finishing 4 years of faculty. The one exception is that gamers can declare after their junior seasons in the event that they flip 22 through the calendar yr of the WNBA Draft. Since Sturdy has a February birthday, that received’t be an possibility.
As ladies’s basketball booms, gamers have extra selections in shaping their careers, whether or not that’s in faculty through the switch portal or professionally with new leagues. Nonetheless, that is one choice that is still out of their management.
“I positively suppose we should always have the choice,” USC star JuJu Watkins stated on the “Good Sport with Sarah Spain” podcast. “There’s simply been such a progress in faculty basketball, the place it’s like, why would you need to go away? Since you’re capable of have that have and construct your model right here in faculty as effectively. I’d say we should always positively have the choice, however I feel faculty is a approach to put together us for the professionals as effectively. … It’s a sensitive topic, however I’m for it.”
Though a change to permit gamers to declare early is unlikely, sufficient underclassmen are tempting professional prospects proper now, headlined by Sturdy. Watkins, who has two remaining years of eligibility, could be a no brainer lottery decide, even with a torn ACL that might preserve her sidelined for this upcoming WNBA season. Madison Booker of Texas has a WNBA physique and pull-up sport, and her fellow SEC gamers Ashlyn Watkins (South Carolina) and Talaysia Cooper (Tennessee) additionally might be pro-ready.
There’s a world the place JuJu Watkins decides to take a seat out the upcoming season, utilizing each of her ultimate years of eligibility, and enters the 2028 WNBA Draft that options Sarah Sturdy.
In the event you have been a GM with the No. 1 general decide, who would you select? pic.twitter.com/AUixhKz3oc
— I speak hoops 🏀 (@trendyhoopstars) April 11, 2025
The thought of the age restrict has traditionally benefited most events, even when it diminished particular person participant company. The WNBA is already the toughest league on the planet to make and earn a second contract in, and it doesn’t behoove the present participant pool so as to add extra rivals for the restricted roster spots.
Till just lately, participant expertise was higher in faculty than within the WNBA. It typically didn’t make sense for athletes to sacrifice the power to earn a school diploma to pre-emptively be a part of a league that didn’t pay that effectively. Sure gamers nonetheless took benefit of the chance to go professional after three seasons, together with No. 1 picks Jewell Loyd and Jackie Younger. Satou Sabally, the No. 2 decide in 2020, cited funds as the rationale she left Oregon early, as she was in faculty earlier than athletes might earn cash.
Overseas-born athletes don’t must cope with the identical age-related constraints as their American counterparts. Gamers born exterior the U.S. can declare for the draft the yr they flip 20, offered they don’t attend faculty within the NCAA system, presumably as a approach to incentivize expertise world wide to play within the WNBA. These concessions have by no means been made for American gamers, who already develop up dreaming of taking part in within the league.
Now the WNBA has higher lodging, extra profitable salaries and a better profile, however faculty sports activities additionally provide cash from collectives and the power to revenue from NIL offers. Athletes are now not lacking out on their incomes potential by being denied early entry into the skilled ranks.
The league advantages from the age restrict as effectively. Along with rookies being extra bodily suited to the professional sport, the NCAA is a implausible advertising and marketing instrument for the WNBA. Gamers come into the league with 4 years of nationwide publicity and oodles of title recognition. Although informal NBA followers wrestle to establish one-and-dones, most WNBA followers are intimately acquainted with the likes of Paige Bueckers, Aneesah Morrow and Hailey Van Lith earlier than they even play their first skilled sport.
Consequently, despite the fact that a brand new CBA is being negotiated, don’t anticipate the age restrict to be a degree of competition.
“It has been talked about; I don’t suppose it’s a excessive precedence,” Seattle Storm guard Lexie Brown stated on “The Ringer WNBA Present” final month. “Going out into the world at 18, 19 years previous as a younger girl with no diploma to go play a sport with nonguaranteed contracts, it’s form of a recipe for catastrophe.”
There’s a affordable dialogue available about whether or not Bueckers could be the No. 1 decide if each participant in faculty this season have been draft-eligible. Sturdy’s general sport, mixed together with her youth, in a league that also runs by means of the submit, makes her a tantalizing choice. Watkins’ prodigious ability and star energy put her in that hypothetical dialog as effectively.
For now, this train stays theoretical. School basketball continues to be a extra in style product, and the WNBA can afford to stay unique and shut its doorways to youthful gamers with the entire expertise that already exists inside its ranks. The subset of gamers who might realistically make the leap early is restricted — too small to rewrite a complete algorithm for.
(Pictures of Madison Booker and Sarah Sturdy: Alex Slitz / Getty Pictures, Joe Buglewicz / Getty Pictures)
