By Chantel Jennings, Sabreena Merchant and Ben Pickman
Player movement in women’s college basketball has never been as significant as it is today. But here at The Athletic, we decided to imagine a world where the opposite is true. What if the best high school players had to continue their college careers on a home-state team? Which would have the best chance in the NCAA Tournament?
To create this scenario, we needed parameters. We based players’ home states on their graduating high schools. (For example, New York is a big winner here as it can claim Canadian Syla Swords. Meanwhile, Maryland gets shorted because although UCLA’s Kiki Rice and Duke’s Jadyn Donovan lived in Maryland while attending high school, their high school was located in Washington, D.C.) We selected players who appeared in at least 15 games this season and considered them at their best and healthiest versions. Then, we divided players by state and selected the teams we thought could offer the best starting fives in this imaginary tournament.
We ranked our top 10 state rosters and then picked our teams based on which group of players we’d most like to see on the floor. We also considered which had the best chance of beating our agreed-upon favorite, Team California (or, at least, give it one heck of…
