Now that Caitlin Clark is a member of the Indiana Fever, it’s time to turn the page on the 2024 WNBA Draft and look ahead to what could be an even more talented class in 2025. This is the last group of players to be eligible for a pandemic bonus year, so the WNBA will have a true double draft of fourth- and fifth-year seniors, which will simplify the process for general managers who no longer have to wonder who will declare.

The relevant exception to that is the medical redshirt. Players still have an additional year of eligibility if they sit out for a season due to injury, as is the case with the top prospect on the board. However, the number of players who fall into that category is relatively small.

Given that the draft order isn’t set until after the 2024 WNBA season, which has yet to commence, this isn’t a mock draft. Instead, it’s a list of the top players without regard to team fit. This exercise also only considers domestic prospects, though we should expect internationals to factor heavily on draft day in 2025. After all, three non-NCAA players were taken in the first round of Monday’s draft.

GO DEEPER

WNBA Draft grades: Fever earn A for picking Clark, Sky receive C+ even with Angel Reese

Much is expected to change between now and then, but probably not the…

Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks put a decisive seal on an undefeated season in the NCAA women’s championship on Sunday. It’s no surprise that they open as the 2025 favorite to win it all again, with +150 odds on BetMGM. With only one player confirmed so far to be leaving  — Kamilla Cardoso has declared for the WNBA Draft — Staley’s third championship could ring in an age of a true dynasty. (Counterpoint: With a win in 2022 after another undefeated regular season, they already are one.)

Behind the Gamecocks, the odds favor Texas (+325) and UConn (+475). Both teams should be bringing back key starters for the 2024-25 season. Notre Dame +700, USC +1000 and UCLA +1200 round out a top tier of favorites before the odds start thinning out with NC State at +2200 and LSU at +3000.

All of the top five teams have shorter odds than the favorite in the men’s tournament, reflecting the continued gap in parity between the two.

But change is coming for the women’s tournament next year. Conference realignment will shift rivalries and set up new challenges for dominant teams — with USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington joining the Big Ten; Oklahoma and Texas joining South Carolina in the SEC; Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah moving to the Big 12; Oregon State and

With Iowa’s loss to South Carolina in the national title game, Caitlin Clark has officially played her last college basketball game. Lucky for all of us, there’s no shortage of star talent around the country. With the game’s parity, conference realignment and more games on national television, several players appear poised to burst either onto the national scene or even further into the national zeitgeist of American sports.

Here’s a look at the 10 biggest stars who could take over (or re-take) women’s college basketball next season.

(Editor’s note: Players’ class listed for 2024-25 season)

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1. JuJu Watkins, USC

Sophomore guard

This dominant freshman class is led by Watkins, who managed to capture the nation’s attention while being mostly tucked away on the Pac-12 Network for most of the season. She’s tasked with leading the USC resurrection as the Trojans move to the Big Ten. Conference realignment only helps Watkins’ star power and name recognition as she’ll now (finally) have games that are accessible to the whole country thanks to the Big Ten Network being partly owned by FOX. The fact that she’ll be playing in and around the three largest media markets in the U.S. and that the Big Ten, sans Caitlin Clark, will be looking for a new conference star to…

Congrats to South Carolina, which was the No. 1 team in all but one edition of this season’s rankings. The Gamecocks proved they were the best team in college basketball for all of 2023-24, just like last year, only this time they were able to cap their remarkable regular season with a national championship. South Carolina’s success was the primary validation of these power rankings, though the last poll did feature 15 of the Sweet 16 teams in the top 18 (apologies to Duke).

In case you’re interested in how well my first power rankings of 2023-24 held up, take a gander! Oregon State really came out of nowhere.

As we look ahead to 2024-25, a reminder that this is an indicator of how teams stand right now, though WNBA Draft decisions and transfers — keep an eye on Oregon State and Washington State following the dissolution of the Pac-12 — could substantially change the makeup of rosters. I’ve priced in some player improvement, particularly for younger players with high pedigree, but otherwise tried to assess these squads based on how the players finished this season. Let me know in the comments if you think I’m overlooking anyone.

Almost famous: Kentucky, Michigan State, Vanderbilt

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Why South Carolina over UConn?

South Carolina is losing Kamilla Cardoso, but otherwise…

With Oregon State leading Notre Dame 17-15 after the first quarter in Friday’s Sweet 16 matchup, Fighting Irish star freshman guard Hannah Hidalgo was forced to exit the game for over four minutes.

It wasn’t due to injury or foul trouble. Rather, it was to remove her nose ring.

Hidalgo began the second quarter on the bench with her head back as trainers worked to carefully remove the nose stud. According to Section 25, Article 7 of the NCAA women’s basketball rulebook, “head decorations, head wear, helmets, and jewelry are illegal.” Hidalgo has worn the nose ring all season but had it taped, just like it was during Friday’s game against Oregon State. According to the ESPN broadcast, officials asked Hidalgo to remove the ring before continuing to play.

Officials asked Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo to remove her nose ring during the Sweet 16 matchup against Oregon State.

@espn pic.twitter.com/nfstCJ1SXQ

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) March 29, 2024

Hidalgo missed a total of four minutes and 10 seconds of game action. Once she checked back into the game, Notre Dame went on a 7-0 run.

Hidalgo, 19, was a first-team All-American during the 2023-24 season. She averaged 22.9 points, 6.2 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game on 45.5 1 percent shooting from the floor.

Oregon…

The Sweet 16 field is set — mostly as we expected it but with some twists.

The left side of the bracket (Albany 1 and Portland 4 regions) includes every No. 1 through No. 4 seed, while the right side (Albany 2 and Portland 3 regions) low seeds include a No. 5 and a No. 7 seed.

Will more chaos ensue in the regionals? Will top seeds keep thriving? We’re here to break down the matchups and provide predictions.

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(All times Eastern)

Friday

Albany 1 | 2:30 p.m. | ESPN

The matchup between the Fighting Irish and Beavers is one of contrasting styles. Fueled by star freshman guard Hannah Hidalgo and an aggressive zone defense, Notre Dame likes to push the tempo and score in transition. The Irish are in the 90th percentile in pace and second nationally in fastbreak points percentage, per CBB Analytics. Hidalgo alone averaged 7.5 fastbreak points per game this season. That all is starkly different from how Oregon State has thrived this year. The Beavers, by comparison, are in the 19th percentile of pace and score only 5.4 fastbreak points a game. On offense, they are efficient from around the rim and from 3-point range. The tandem of junior guard Talia von Oelhoffen and sophomore forward Raegan Beers is especially tough to stop.

How the Beavers contain Hidalgo and guard Sonia Citron will…

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

Four days, 48 games (well, technically 52 when including the First Four), and a weekend devoid of sleep and full of basketball. Now we’re down to the final two weekends of play. The Sweet 16 is set, and the matchups are exquisite.

So many varying and contrasting styles face one another. Some games present clashes of rosters with similar ethos and questions alike.

There’s a beautiful yet gut-wrenching duality of the NCAA Tournament, which is largely what makes it one of the most compelling phenomena in sports. The tournament is about testing mettle, seeing what a team can do on the fly with limited time in heightened scenarios in front of huge crowds. The stakes elevate and much of what is known and practiced can go out the window because of a random heater by a backup two guard from an unheard-of town in Minnesota.

Great teams with years of legacy and expectation can fall because of an off night. A team that struggled with injury and inconsistency all year might just hit the right groove at the right time, find confidence and ride that high to a Final Four.

Watching that team make a run…

The Sweet 16 in the women’s NCAA Tournament is almost entirely built of the top four seeds in each region. Only three teams (No. 5 Colorado, No. 5 Baylor and No. 7 Duke) won on the road in the second round to advance to the Sweet 16. My model projects the likelihood of upsets now that we’re in the tournament’s second week.

South Carolina is, of course, the overwhelming favorite. The Gamecocks won the national title in 42.4 percent of my simulations. They made the Final Four more than 70 percent of the time.

My projected favorite in the other regions are Texas, UConn and UCLA. UConn is only the No. 3 seed in Regional 3 in Portland, but No. 2 Ohio State lost in the second round and my model does not rate USC as highly as its No. 1 seed.

UCLA is the favorite in Regional 2 in Albany ahead of No. 1 seed Iowa. The Hawkeyes are a strong favorite against Colorado in the Sweet 16, but would be an underdog in my model against either UCLA or LSU in the Elite Eight. That region is balanced among the top three teams with Iowa, UCLA and LSU all making the Final Four in more than 25 percent of my simulations.

Before getting into the numbers, it’s worth explaining what you’re looking at. I created a college basketball model to project the outcomes of games. I take several metrics into…

In 2010, Satyan Devadoss, then at Williams College, now a professor of applied mathematics and computer science at the University of San Diego, wrote: “It can truly be called the Michael Jordan of chalk, the Rolls Royce of chalk.”

He was talking about Hagoromo Fulltouch, a brand of blackboard chalk that was so smooth to the touch, moisture-proof and dust-free that math teachers around the world went gaga for it until the company that made it went out of business in 2015.

Or maybe Professor Devadoss was peering into the future to describe the 2024 NCAA women’s tournament.

Higher seeds went a perfect 16 for 16 in Saturday’s first-round matchups. In the dozen games we analyzed as Bracket Breakers matchups, where teams were separated by at least five seeds, favorites won all 12 and by an average of more than 20 points. Our model saw Syracuse as a very vulnerable giant, but Arizona shot just 5-19 (26.3 percent) on threes and committed 21 turnovers. And when the great Dyaisha Fair returned after being carried off the court with an injury at the end of the third quarter, the Orange crushed the Wildcats. Fair scored her team’s final 13 points, leading Syracuse to a 5-point comeback win. Slingshot also admired Florida Gulf Coast (as always), and the Eagles led Oklahoma for most…

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

This season has been so beautiful, and the NCAA Tournament is a welcome extension of that so far. In a sport that’s defined ever more by speed, pace and efficiency, it’s crucial to stop every so often to soak in how excellent the game is.

Iowa State’s Audi Crooks, a true freshman, dropped 40 points in her first tournament appearance. She did that while shooting 18 of 20 and leading the Cyclones back from a 20-point deficit against Maryland to advance to the second round.

We saw other freshmen ascend to terrific heights, too. JuJu Watkins has propelled USC back to levels the Trojans haven’t been to in decades. Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo seems to break a record every day. Texas’ Madison Booker has stepped up. MiLaysia Fulwiley’s stardom and impact continues to grow. Crooks and the four other freshmen in Iowa State’s self-proclaimed Fab Five have the Cyclones dancing in what was expected to be a rebuild year.

This video from from former Gonzaga and current Long Beach State men’s coach Dan Monson struck a chord. It’s a good reminder to fully appreciate what’s happening in…