Hot off her NCAA title, Paige Bueckers cruises for 1st pick in the WNBA draft

Barely a week after cutting down the nets at the women’s Final Four, Paige Bueckers is expected to get yet another jewel in her crown.

At Monday night’s WNBA Draft, the 23-year-old combo guard is expected to be selected first overall by the Dallas Wings. The pick could transform the franchise, which hasn’t won a title since 2008 when the team was in Detroit. The Wings only won nine games last year.

There, Bueckers is poised to join the league’s growing roster of superstars — from newcomers like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese to veterans like A’ja Wilson and Sabrina Ionescu — who delivered a massive boom in audience for the league in 2024.

The Wings won the top overall pick in November’s WNBA Draft Lottery, which was widely viewed as a Paige Bueckers sweepstakes. Days later, Dallas announced it had sold out of season tickets for 2025.

“We know what No. 1 draft picks can do to this league, how they’ve impacted other franchises,” said Dallas Wings general manager Curt Miller in January. “It’s a truly, truly exciting time to have the No. 1 pick.”

Bueckers’ journey

High expectations are nothing new for Bueckers. She was the top recruit in the country coming out of high school in 2020 — an achievement itself in a class that also included future stars Clark, Reese and Cameron Brink.

And the hype was real: In her freshman year at UConn, Bueckers was everything she had been promised to be. She averaged 20 points per game, led the Huskies to the Final Four and became the first freshman to win each of four different major national Player of the Year awards.

But then injuries sidelined her for most of the following two years. And her return in the 2023-24 season was overshadowed by the undefeated South Carolina Gamecocks championship run and Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes, who beat Bueckers’ Huskies in the Final Four.

Bueckers opted to return for her senior year rather than enter the WNBA Draft in 2024, when she was projected to be a top-three pick (after Clark, taken first overall by the Indiana Fever, and perhaps Brink, the Stanford star forward who was ultimately selected second by the Los Angeles Sparks).

And it paid off. Just over a week ago, Bueckers brought home that coveted championship for UConn, the powerhouse’s first title in nearly a decade, with a dominant 82-59 win over South Carolina in which Bueckers scored 17 points and added six rebounds.

“It’s been a story of resilience, of gratitude, of adversity, of overcoming adversity, just responding to life’s challenges,” Bueckers told reporters after the championship game. “To be rewarded with something like this, you can’t really even put it into words.”

Other WNBA Draft storylines

Monday’s draft is also poised to reshape the struggling Washington Mystics, who have finished with a losing record in four of the past five seasons. Last year’s performance earned the Mystics the No. 4 pick, and trades netted them the No. 3 and No. 6 picks. Their targets might include forwards Kiki Iriafen of USC or Aneesah Morrow of LSU, or Notre Dame guard Sonia Citron.

The Seattle Storm finished 25-15 last season yet have the second pick in the draft, thanks to a four-team trade. The league’s newest franchise, the Golden State Valkyries, will have the No. 5 pick. And the Los Angeles Sparks will look to bounce back with a No. 9 pick after the team finished last season a league-worst 8-32 after losing Brink to an ACL tear in June.

Sixteen players were invited to Monday’s draft, including Bueckers, Iriafen, Morrow, Citron and the French star Dominique Malonga. The draft will air at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time on ESPN.