The 30th season of WNBA basketball tipped off on Friday night, with 14 teams competing to knock off the Las Vegas Aces as league champs (and A’ja Wilson & the Aces doing their best to prevent such things from happening).
Whether it be one of the league’s two newcomers (or pseudo-newcomers, in the case of the second Portland Fire franchise), or an entrenched one like the defending league runners-up in Phoenix, there’s lots of talent to keep an eye on this summer across the league.
Now that I’m no longer employed to write about the league (or any other association, for that matter) on a full-time basis, I figured I’d resurrect the old newsletter to cover the summer’s action on the hardwood, expanding West Coast Bias Sports’ coverage to the WNBA (and any other Pac-12 related subjects that come my way).
Given that a former Pac-12 program (UCLA) is the reigning NCAA women’s basketball champ and Cori Close’s Bruins produced a record six WNBA Draft picks in 2026, it seemed like a good time to break down just how wide-ranging the OG Pac-12’s presence can be felt in today’s WNBA.
To do so, I took a look at the 212 active players listed on the WNBA’s website, taking diligent notes on how many came from the diaspora of the original Pacific-12 Conference.
What This Year’s WNBA Rosters Tell Us About the Conference of Champions
While the Pac-12 (in its historic sense) died at the knife’s edge of charlatans like Brett Yormark of the Big-12 and Kevin Warren (formerly of the Big Ten), that’s not to say the conference’s reach can’t be felt (and seen) when you tune into a WNBA contest.
Between the 15 teams in the league this season, 25 players (or roughly 12% of the WNBA’s 212 actively listed players) come from one of the original Pac-12 programs.
Of course, Close’s fingerprints are all over the league, with 11 players in the league right now, three more than Tara VanDerveer’s Stanford Cardinal for the top spot among the OG Pac-12 schools.
While the Bruins broke the record books of the WNBA’s three-round draft by getting six players picked this Spring, UCLA can also lay claim to veterans, like Monique Billings of the Indiana Fever, giving credence to the Westwood institution’s impact on today’s league landscape.
VanDerveer, who retired from the Palo Alto institution of tree-centric mayhem in 2024, can lay claim to helping hone the skills showed by forward Cameron Brink of the Los Angeles Sparks, as well as her teammate, Nneka Ogwumike.
The Oregon Ducks (and their longtime head coach, Kelly Graves) can lay claim to three current WNBA players, including a pair of stars that will suit up together for the first time inside the gilded confines of Barclays Center, in Sabrina Ionescu and Satou Sabally, while her sister, Nyara, will play for the expansion Toronto Tempo this year.
Up I-5 in Seattle, the Washington Huskies can lay claim to two of the WNBA’s elder stateswomen, in four-time All-Star Kelsey Plum and two-time champion Sami Whitcomb, who’s currently suiting up in the backcourt for the Phoenix Mercury.
The Huskies are one of four OG Pac-12 members to have two or more players in the WNBA’s heralded active duty list, despite UW last reaching the second weekend of the Big Dance nine years ago.
What Pac-12’s WNBA Connection Means For Us All
Other Pac-12 OG’s like Arizona (Aari McDonald) and USC (Kiki Iriafen) either have an alum on (or near, in McDonald’s case) the league’s active duty list, giving further credence to the conference’s longstanding excellence in women’s basketball.
With Trojans star guard Juju Watkins coming back from a torn ACL in 2026, while the Wildcats bring a top-20 recruiting class in head coach Becky Burke’s second year, meaning we could see more Wildcats in the league before long.
While the Pac-12 might no longer exist in its once-glorious form that stretched from the banks of the Puget Sound down towards the sunburned saguaros of Tucson, its legion of talent on the hardwood continues to impact each of the 330 games that’ll take place across the 30th season of WNBA basketball this summer and fall.
While times (and conference affiliations) change, the steadfast excellence of West Coast women’s basketball rolls on, giving us something to count on in the hellscape of negativity and vitriol that is the modern American zeitgeist.