🔴Aaliyah Edwards WNBA Draft: What team is predicted to draft the UConn star?🔴
0Aaliyah Edwards WNBA Draft: What team is predicted to draft the UConn star?
Aaliyah Edwards announced her intention to forgo her final year of eligibility and enter the 2024 WNBA draft on social media.
The UConn Huskies senior could have used her eligibility waiver for one final season, but she declared for the draft on March 21 with the intention of going professional next season.
Although got to savor every moment because this is my last jam at UConn, I'm all in, ready to bring that championship glory back to Storrs with my squad by my side," Edwards said in her announcement video. "Let's have one last dance."
A three-year starter for the Huskies, Edwards helped UConn make the Final Four of March Madness in 2021 and 2022, including a national title game appearance in the latter. This season, she is averaging 17.8 points and 9.3 rebounds per game, with her efforts putting her first and second in the rankings for each statistic.
Which team will sign Aaliyah Edwards?
Edwards, standing at 6ft 3in, is a projected first-round pick in next month's draft and is currently projected by ESPN's Michael Voepel to go No. 5 overall to the Dallas Wings.
But for the 22-year-old, she indicated that she is not too focused on which team she will be joining, but rather, the joy of making her dreams come true by playing in the WNBA.
The WNBA Draft is held annually and allows teams to select from a pool of up-and-coming talented college basketball players, as well as others playing in other leagues across the world.
The league requires domestic draft entrants to be at least 22 years old during the year in which the draft takes place and to have no remaining college eligibility or to renounce any future college eligibility. These rules have been in place since 2014.
"I've always dreamed of playing pro and playing in the WNBA," Edwards told reporters last week in a Zoom availability. "To have my name among those lists and those rankings of projected top five, it's crazy. If you were to ask me when I was 10 years old, I'd be, like, 'no way.'
"It's also humbling at the same time, because even though my name's out there, it's more just a credit to all the hard work and the effort I put in behind the scenes and put into the game that I'm passionate about. So I'm just going to go into the draft just being blessed with whatever outcome it is, but truly grateful to be recognized like that."