If you’re looking for a way to recapture your basketball joy and distract yourself from certain events that have transpired in the last month and change, I have good news for you— March is here. The NCAA tournament begins next week, the 2025 WNBA draft will follow shortly after, and just one month later, the WNBA season will tip off! If watching the NBA has been too much to bear, there are a lot of high-level alternatives on the horizon.
This year’s draft is a massive one for the Dallas Wings. You may have heard they won the draft lottery a few months ago. Since then, the Wings have made a flurry of transactions in an effort to rebuild their roster after a miserable 2024 campaign. Gone is superstar Satou Sabally, and while losing a player of her caliber is never easy, Dallas hopes to recreate her in the aggregate. If they’re to succeed, it starts with the draft.
In addition to the No. 1 overall pick, the Wings own the 12th (last pick of the first round) and 14th selections. This is a deep draft, with potential impact role players available in the late first and early second rounds. There are a ton of intriguing options in this range that could fit well in Dallas.
The good news for Wings fans? Most of the prospective picks are playing in March Madness! If you’re looking to do some armchair scouting, the tournament is a great time to tune in and see who excels when the lights are brightest. With the Wings’ draft position in mind, here are some players I’d suggest keeping a close eye on as the tourney gets underway.
Paige Bueckers: Point guard, Connecticut
There isn’t much to say about Paige that hasn’t been said ad nauseam. As one of her biggest fans for half a decade, I wrote about what winning the draft lottery meant for Dallas and who the Wings were getting in Bueckers. I won’t rehash all of that here, but if there’s one thing you need to know, it’s this: Paige Bueckers is a top-three point guard prospect of all time. There are very few holes in her game, and she is one of the most malleable and scalable superstar prospects in the history of the sport. If you haven’t seen her play, watch her do her thing in March. You won’t regret it. Here she is recently torching Seton Hall in her sleep with a barrage of middies:
The only way Bueckers is not a Dallas Wings in April is if she “pulls an Eli Manning” and forces her way elsewhere. There has been talk that Bueckers could attempt something like this, but those rumors have been quiet lately. Right now, the most likely scenario is Bueckers getting her name called first in the draft and joining the Wings for training camp.
Olivia Miles: Point guard, Notre Dame
In the unlikely event that Bueckers spurns Dallas, Olivia Miles is the only other acceptable college prospect to draft No. 1 overall. Coming into this season, the book on Miles was this: best passer/playmaker in college basketball, incredible downhill driver, unreal feel for the game, completely busted jumper. Miles was such an exciting prospect, but the awful shooting seemed to cap her ceiling at the next level. Health was also a big concern, as Miles tore her ACL at the end of the 2022-2023 season and missed the following year.
What Miles has done in 2024-2025 since returning is nothing short of revelatory. After three years of 25% three-point shooting on 211 total attempts, Miles has taken 171 threes this year and made 71. That’s a 41% clip on 5.5 attempts per game!!! And not all of these threes are wide-open looks. In fact, most of them aren’t! Miles is taking as many pull-up threes as catch-and-shoots. The mechanics still look wonky, but the shots are going in now.
And when she’s not bombing away from three, she’s doing stuff like this with the ball in her hands:
Like Bueckers, Miles is one of the better point guard prospects we’ve ever seen. She would be a great consolation prize if Dallas missed out on Paige. Miles, who has one more year of college eligibility, has yet to declare for the draft and could return to Notre Dame next year. If she does come out, she’s a lock to go top-two in this class.
We’re moving down the board here and shifting focus to players who may be available in the 12-14 range for Dallas. At this point in the draft, you’re throwing darts and betting on upside and projectable skills. And if you’re looking for defense (and the Wings should be), there aren’t many better prospects than Saniya Rivers.
Rivers is easily the best wing defender in this class. Standing at 6’1 with a massive 6’5 wingspan, she completely engulfs ballhandlers with length and athleticism. She can defend the point of attack, roam off-ball, and act as an effective secondary rim protector (career-high 1.3 blocks per game this season). With these physical tools, Rivers is virtually certain to become an impact defender at the WNBA level.
Offensively, it’s another story. Miscast as a point guard for much of her NC State tenure, Rivers has done an adequate job running the offense. Ironically, this pigeonholing might partially be responsible for her playmaking development; Rivers’ passing is her best offensive skill. She routinely makes good reads out of the pick-and-roll and shows flashes of high-level creation.
You can squint and see a secondary/tertiary playmaking wing in the W. The harder part for Rivers is the shooting — it’s a mess and not just on jumpers. With .393/.283/.671 career shooting splits, it’s tough to project her as a passable offensive player. More concerning than the lack of jumper is the mediocre finishing at the rim, where she’s converted just 52.8% of her attempts in the half-court this season per Synergy sports (WNBA average is around 65%).
If Rivers is to become a WNBA rotation player, she’ll need to make strides on offense. I’m a believer in the passing and feel and have to hope she improves as a shooter from somewhere on the floor. Rivers is a similar prospect to Jordan Horston in 2023; Dallas had three chances to draft her and didn't do it. I guarantee you they regret that now. The Wings need wing defense, and Rivers fits the bill.
Sania Feagin: Big, South Carolina
Full disclosure: Sania Feagin is one of my favorite players in college basketball. An analytics darling, Feagin always seems to impact the game when she’s on the floor. Before this season, she played a reserve role for the Gamecocks and flashed glimpses of brilliance without much production. But with star big Ashlyn Watkins tearing her ACL early in 2025, Feagin has finally gotten a chance at starting minutes. And she’s taken advantage of that opportunity, becoming an essential piece to a South Carolina team with its eyes set on the national title.
Feagin is a bit undersized for a WNBA center at 6’3, but she makes up for that with a plus wingspan and great athleticism. South Carolina is one of the best defensive teams in the country, and Feagin has been their anchor. Her 7.2% block rate is in the 94th percentile among all D1 players, demonstrating her ability to act as a primary rim protector for an elite team. The Gamecocks’ stout defense is 6.6 points per 100 possessions better when Feagin is on the floor. Her size is an issue at the next level, but as we saw last year with the Wings, bigger isn’t always better on defense.
Offensively, Feagin is still a bit raw, though there is a ton of projectability here. She doesn’t shoot her mid-range jumper often, but she really should; it looks great.
Feagin has good touch around the rim and should be a strong roller at the next level. She doesn’t have too much of a back-to-the-basket game, though she is more nimble and competent with the ball in her hands than many traditional bigs.
The most exciting thing about Feagin on offense is her passing. She can hit shooters off the short roll, find other bigs in the post, and operate as a dribble-handoff hub. Her assist rate this year sits at 11.2%, 64th percentile in D1, an incredible mark for a big.
Feagin is likely rocketing up draft boards after an impressive SEC tournament. At this rate, she may not be available for Dallas when they pick at 12. But if she is, selecting her would be a no-brainer. The Wings are desperate for good defense at the five, and Feagin brings that plus tantalizing offensive upside. You don’t find that too often this late in the draft.
Janiah Barker: Wing/big, UCLA
Barker transferred to UCLA this season after two years at Texas A&M, where she showed massive potential and tantalizing tools. However, her production was inconsistent, and she decided it would be in her best interest to move to an elite program at UCLA for her junior year. Barker will be draft-eligible in 2025 due to her age, and she has previously stated she intends to declare as soon as possible.
Sadly, things haven’t exactly gone smoothly for Barker as a Bruin. For one, she’s almost exclusively coming off the bench for a stacked UCLA team. After playing 26.5 minutes per game and starting 27 contests for A&M last season, Barker is down to just 17.8 minutes a night this year. And she hasn’t exactly been productive in that time, with modest 7.6 points and 5.9 rebounds per game averages. So, what gives? Why is she even on the WNBA radar at all?
Well, Barker is 6’4 and possesses incredible fluidity for her size. She can handle the ball, play-make, shoot pull-up jumpers, and drive downhill. Her athleticism is tremendous and allows her to guard up and down the lineup. She can drop, switch, blitz, hedge, whatever you want. You don’t see many players at her size with these natural gifts.
The problem with Barker is she has routinely demonstrated poor feel for the game throughout her college career. She doesn’t seem to know when to go or when to slow and turns the ball over way too much (24.7% turnover rate, 22nd percentile in D1). It can be frustrating to watch her play because it’s hard to understand how someone with her tools can look pedestrian on the floor. We’ve been waiting three years for Barker to put it all together, and she hasn’t done it. In many ways, she’s regressed after transferring. It’s getting harder and harder to project her as a good WNBA player when she’s hardly been a great college player.
But at pick 12 or 14 in the draft? Sign me up. I’m taking the chance. A lot of times, picks in this range are complete throwaways. There’s not a ton of risk in drafting a player with Barker’s upside here. If she figures it out, you have a superstar on your hands. If she doesn’t, it’s NaLyssa Smith 2.0, and you shrug your shoulders and move on.