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 stage. WNBA executives needed to be drooling over the thought of drafting the following Huskies star.
However they’ll have to attend one other three years. Beneath 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 school. The one exception is that gamers can declare after their junior seasons in the event that they flip 22 throughout the calendar 12 months of the WNBA Draft. Since Sturdy has a February birthday, that gained’t be an choice.
As girls’s basketball booms, gamers have extra decisions in shaping their careers, whether or not that’s in school by way of the switch portal or professionally with new leagues. Nevertheless, that is one choice that is still out of their management.
“I positively suppose we must always have the choice,” USC star JuJu Watkins stated on the “Good Recreation with Sarah Spain” podcast. “There’s simply been such a progress in school basketball, the place it’s like, why would you need to depart? Since you’re capable of have that have and construct your model right here in school as effectively. I might say we must always positively have the choice, however I believe school is a strategy 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, can be a no brainer lottery choose, even with a torn ACL that may 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 may very well be pro-ready.
There’s a world the place JuJu Watkins decides to sit down out the upcoming season, utilizing each of her ultimate years of eligibility, and enters the 2028 WNBA Draft that options Sarah Sturdy.
If you happen to had been a GM with the No. 1 general choose, who would you select? pic.twitter.com/AUixhKz3oc
— I speak hoops 🏀 (@trendyhoopstars) April 11, 2025
The concept 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 this 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 not too long ago, participant expertise was higher in school than within the WNBA. It usually didn’t make sense for athletes to sacrifice the flexibility to earn a school diploma to pre-emptively be 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 choose in 2020, cited funds as the rationale she left Oregon early, as she was in school earlier than athletes may earn cash.
Overseas-born athletes don’t should cope with the identical age-related constraints as their American counterparts. Gamers born exterior the U.S. can declare for the draft the 12 months they flip 20, supplied they don’t attend school within the NCAA system, presumably as a strategy to incentivize expertise all over the world to play within the WNBA. These concessions have by no means been made for American gamers, who already develop up dreaming of enjoying within the league.
Now the WNBA has higher lodging, extra profitable salaries and the next profile, however school sports activities additionally supply cash from collectives and the flexibility to revenue from NIL offers. Athletes are 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 fitted to the professional sport, the NCAA is a improbable advertising instrument for the WNBA. Gamers come into the league with 4 years of nationwide publicity and oodles of identify recognition. Although informal NBA followers wrestle to establish one-and-dones, most WNBA followers are intimately accustomed to the likes of Paige Bueckers, Aneesah Morrow and Hailey Van Lith earlier than they even play their first skilled sport.
Because of this, despite the fact that a brand new CBA is being negotiated, don’t anticipate the age restrict to be some extent 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 type of a recipe for catastrophe.”
There’s a affordable dialogue available about whether or not Bueckers would be the No. 1 pick if each participant in school this season had been draft-eligible. Sturdy’s general sport, mixed together with her youth, in a league that also runs by way of the put up, 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 remains to be a extra well-liked 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 may realistically make the leap early is proscribed — too small to rewrite a complete algorithm for.
(Photographs of Madison Booker and Sarah Sturdy: Alex Slitz / Getty Photographs, Joe Buglewicz / Getty Photographs)
