At the triumphant inauguration of each college basketball season, Power 5 teams debut down one of two roads: either they humorously stomp a mid-major program that’s just happy to be playing in a real arena, or they’re locked into an exhibition dog fight with a fellow title contender. The latter games are played in the interest of national excitement. The former are mostly-pointless stimuli for the host team’s record.

Monday’s matchup in South Bend between No. 6 Notre Dame and Mercyhurst, hailing from Erie, Pennsylvania, never projected to be a competitive outing—rightfully so. However, the game found purpose elsewhere. 617 days since she last played, Notre Dame senior guard Olivia Miles was making her return to the sport.

Miles, who tore her ACL in late February of the 2022-23 season, headlined the AP All-American Second Team that very same year. The Fighting Irish closed out that regular season 2-2 following Miles’ injury, valiantly fighting to win two March Madness contests without their floor general before losing to Maryland in the Sweet 16. Miles would miss the entirety of the following season as well.

In Miles’ absence, freshman point guard Hannah Hidalgo dispatched one of the most decorated, memorable seasons from a freshman in women’s college basketball history in 2023-24. Hidalgo finished first in the nation in steals, sixth in scoring, 25th in assists and was third in win shares. At just 19 years old, she was named to the AP All-American First Team, set the ACC Freshman scoring record and won ACC Defensive Player of the Year. Hidalgo and Miles, marching respectively into their second and fourth seasons, compose what could be one of the greatest backcourts in NCAA history.

Theories of redundancy between Miles and Hidalgo are only projected by those rooting for Hidalgo to put up historic numbers. There’s no basis to claim that an excess of world-class guard play could hurt the Fighting Irish’s team success. Miles led the ACC in assists-per-game in two of the three seasons she’s played and will take pressure off of Hidalgo, who frequently demanded aggressive pick-and-roll coverages late in her freshman campaign. Hidalgo has proven to be a capable jump shooter, and likely will alternate between playing on- and off-ball while sharing the court with Miles. Both guards are absolute menaces on defense who can be deployed as pesky ball-hawks in both man coverage and head coach Niele Ivey’s signature staggered 2-3 zone.

The expectations for Notre Dame’s headline duo couldn’t be higher. Regardless of the quality of opponent they faced on Monday, they somehow still exceeded them. Miles finished their season opener with a triple-double: 20 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists and three steals. Hidalgo kept pace with 19 points, nine rebounds and six (!!!) steals. Pittsburgh graduate transfer Liatu King impressed in her Irish debut, leading the team with 24 points.

Notre Dame showed off with a 44-point victory. despite two of their top three scorers from last season being inactive. Sonia Citron is expected to be back soon with a minor health concern. Maddy Westbeld, the team’s flagship interior presence, hopes to return from a lingering foot injury by the beginning of ACC play.

Banners aren’t hung for trampling Mercyhurst University, who just this year ascended to the Division I level. Regardless, Miles and Hidalgo looked like everything Fighting Irish fans hoped they would look like in their first game together. It’s rare to have the luxury of two generational two-way guards, but having the depth to back them up seems like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Notre Dame checks all the boxes. It’s hard to argue that a bad matchup exists for the program’s best roster since 2018. Miles’ final ride will undoubtedly be one to remember.

As the WNBA season has officially come to a close, the Women’s Chinese Basketball Association (WCBA) is revving up for high-quality hoops featuring some of the league’s finest stars. More and more WNBA veterans are exercising the option to play ball in China during the WNBA offseason, allowing them to stay in tip-top shape and compete internationally at a high level during the W hiatus.

With countless players from the W set to hoop in China, the bridge between the WNBA and WCBA will continue to be extended.

Same faces, new-ish places

The WCBA is slated to have one of its largest American professional turnouts to date. Former WNBA star Liz Cambage and 2024 WNBA champion and Finals MVP Jonquel Jones of the New York Liberty will be teaming up for Sichuan, Chennedy Carter of the Chicago Sky will be representing Wuhan, Ty Harris of the Connecticut Sun will play for Liaoning, NaLyssa Smith of the Indiana Fever will be suiting up for Zhejiang and more.

The WCBA’s 21 teams currently are permitted to sign a maximum of three foreign players this season. Here’s a breakdown of where WNBA players will be playing. Expect more players to potentially join a team once the season begins.

Sichuan: Liz Cambage, Jonquel Jones (New York Liberty)

Shanghai: Kamilla Cardoso (Chicago Sky)

Zhejiang: Ezinne Kalu (Atlanta Dream), NaLyssa Smith (Indiana Fever)

Beijing: Cheyenne Parker-Tyus (Atlanta Dream), Aari McDonald (Los Angeles Sparks)

Shanxi: Olivia Nelson-Ododa (Connecticut Sun), Kelsey Mitchell (Indiana Fever

Wuhan: Chennedy Carter (Chicago Sky)

Shandong: Alanna Smith (Minnesota Lynx), Marquesha Davis (New York Liberty)

Liaoning: Ty Harris (Connecticut Sun)

Inner Mongolia: Kalani Brown (Dallas Wings), Natisha Hiedeman (Minnesota Lynx)

HeNan: Odyssey Sims (Los Angeles Sparks)

Anhui: Kiana Williams (Seattle Storm)

Jiangsu: Kaela Davis (Chicago Sky)

Heilongjiang: Myisha Hines-Allen (Minnesota Lynx), Mercedes Russell (Seattle Storm)

Shaanxi: Diamond DeShields (Chicago Sky)

Jiangxi: Jaylyn Sherrod (New York Liberty)

The opening match of the WCBA season is set to tip on Nov. 15 in Chengdu, Sichuan. Until then, teams are preparing for the season by participating in preseason tournaments.

The season is bound to stir up excitement and display the melting pot of women’s basketball, featuring some of the highest-caliber players from not only the United States and China, but many other countries as well.

The most important game of Round 1 of the 2024-25 WNBL season was the Finals rematch between the reigning champs, the Southside Flyers, and the runner-ups, the Perth Lynx. The Lynx won 94-79, with four players scoring in double figures, two grabbing at least 10 boards and three dishing out at least four dimes. The best player for the Flyers, Aussie Alice Kunek, had 22 points and 11 boards, but the Lynx outshot the Flyers, 52 percent on field goals compared to 40 percent. They also out-rebounded the champs, 40-35. And the Lynx won while missing one of the best players in the country in Amy Atwell, who ended the 2024 WNBA season with the Phoenix Mercury, due to a knee injury.

Taylor, Turner show promise Down Under

Another Mercury was in action Down Under as Celeste Taylor made her debut as a starter for the Sydney Flames. She contributed for her team in almost every statistical category: eight points, four rebounds, two assists, one steal and one block. The Flames beat the Capitals in the highest-scoring game of Round 1, 102-85. Talking to Swish Appeal after the game, Celeste was happy with her debut, but thought that her team, herself included, could’ve performed better on defense.

The highest-scoring player on the Capitals was Nicole Munger. The former Michigan Wolverine scored 24 points, going 8-for-11 from the field, including 6-of-9 from 3. But that was not enough to get her team the W. Still, Munger’s third season in Canberra got off to a solid start and the 5-foot-11 guard seems to feel at home in Australia.

The Chicago Sky’s Brianna Turner came out swinging for the Adelaide Lightning in what turned out to be the tightest contest of the round. With five minutes left on the game clock the Bendigo Spirit were up by only four points, however, the referees reversed their decision regarding a 3-pointer made by Adelaide’s Japreece Dean, a former UCLA Bruin. When the replay revealed that it was 2-pointer, the Lightning’s score was reduced to 70 and the Spirit found themselves up by five. In what remained of the game, the Lightning failed to score a single basket and the Spirit won 84-70. The ending and the final score shouldn’t overshadow a stellar performance by Turner.

Round 1 scores:

Townsville Fire 84, Geelong United 58

Bendigo Spirit 84, Adelaide Lightning 70

Perth Lynx 94, Southside Flyers 79

Sydney Flames 102, UC Capitals 85

With the second round of qualifying games for FIBA’s Women’s EuroBasket 2025 competition about to begin, the 2024-25 EuroLeague Women season is currently on a brief hiatus. During what is known as the “national team break,” many clubs across Europe will get the next couple of weeks off as their players compete for their respective national teams in these qualifiers.

Given the small break in the action, let’s run through what’s happened in group play thus far and what (and who) to watch for when the games resume in late November.

Mersin, Fenerbahçe and Valencia are advancing to the second round

Among the changes to the competition system for the 2024-25 EuroLeague Women season was the introduction of a second phase to group play, at which point the field narrows to the top-ranked clubs from the first phase. The goal of this change was to “raise the stakes” of games throughout the season, ideally by eliminating weaker clubs from the competition earlier on and diversifying the number of possible matchups between the stronger ones.

Though there are still two weeks remaining in the first phase of group play, several clubs have already qualified for the next round:

• Group B: ÇBK Mersin and Žabiny Brno
• Group C: Fenerbahçe Opet and Casademont Zaragoza
• Group D: Umana Reyer Venezia and Valencia Basket Club

Most of these names are not surprising. Clubs like Fenerbahçe, Mersin and Valencia have rosters stacked with international talent and occupied the top three spots in FIBA’s preseason EuroLeague Women power rankings. Fenerbahçe and Mersin both remain undefeated in group play with 4-0 records, and little has changed regarding their championship aspirations.

On the other hand, no one has technically been eliminated from second-round contention quite yet, though it’s not looking good for DVTK HUN-Therm (1-3 in Group A), Olympiacos B.C. (0-4 in Group B), Villeneuve-d’Ascq LM (0-4 in Group C) and UNI Győr (0-4 in Group D). Villeneuve-d’Ascq has been particularly disappointing after making it all the way to the EuroLeague Women title game last season.

Finally, nothing has been decided yet in Group A. Beretta Famila Schio (3-1) and Perfumerias Avenida (2-2) both got a decent amount of hype entering the season, but neither club has punched their ticket to the second round, despite Schio going 2-0 against Avenida in head-to-head matchups. HUN-Therm still has a chance to move on, though it will be difficult after a pair of losses to Basket Landes (2-2).

Youngsters Janelle Salaün and Pauline Astier have been showing out

One of the many reasons to follow EuroLeague Women is to watch young international stars develop their games against the highest levels of competition, and given what we’ve seen in group play thus far, the future of women’s basketball in France is looking like it’s in good hands.

23-year-old forward Janelle Salaün, who is in her first season with Schio after playing for Villeneuve-d’Ascq since she was a teenager, is having a breakout campaign. Salaün averaged 11.5 points per game for Villeneuve last season, so it’s not like she’s coming out of nowhere, but she’s been even better for Schio, ranking fourth in the competition in scoring (17.8 points per game) and 10th in rebounding (6.8 rebounds per game) while shooting a highly efficient 52 percent from the field and 45.5 percent on 3-pointers.

Then you have the play of guards Pauline Astier (22 years old) and Marine Fauthoux (23 years old)—two more players who, like Salaün, are no strangers to the French basketball circuit, but are nonetheless turning heads in EuroLeague Women. Astier has been tremendous for Bourges, averaging 13.3 points and seven assists per game to go along with a ridiculous 4.3 steals, the latter of which lead the competition by a healthy margin. Fauthoux doesn’t have quite as large of a role on a loaded Mersin roster, but she’s still contributing eight points and five assists (seventh in EuroLeague Women) in 30 minutes played per game.

France isn’t the only country well-represented by young talent. Finnish forward Awak Kuier (23 years old) has been one of the most intriguing up-and-coming players in the world for a while now, and she’s been excellent thus far in her first EuroLeague Women season, leading Venezia in scoring at 15.3 points per game while chipping in 1.3 steals and 1.5 blocks on the defensive end. Kuier has scored in double figures in each of her first four games, and she’s been a big reason why Venezia has already locked up a spot in the second round of group play.

Stephanie White is Indiana basketball royalty and she was treated as such during her introductory press conference as the head coach of the Indiana Fever on Monday.

White acknowledged the journalists who covered her previous stints here, as a player (2000-04), assistant coach (2011-14) and head coach (2015-16), and they treated her with reverence rather than just respect reserved for an established coach, one of the best in the league. 20 years after her retirement from her playing, the emotional connection is still there and it makes you understand why the Fever couldn’t waste the chance of signing White. As well as why White can’t stay away from the Fever. The following statement captures her attitude and work ethic:

I think people expect a lot out of me, but nobody can expect as much out of me as I do….I want perfection, and I strive for perfection all the time.

However, she didn’t share those words on Monday, but in 2000, as a 23-year-old who just joined her homestate team as the No. 8 pick in the WNBA Expansion Draft. The expectations were high for the 1995 Indiana Miss Basketball and 1999 NCAA champion with Purdue when she came back to Indiana.

The Fever’s first ever general manager and current president of basketball and business operations, Kelly Krauskopf, alluded to that time during the press conference, sharing:

My first player transaction that I ever did was to bring her to Indiana when we were an expansion team a long time ago, and the player that I traded for her was Sandy Brondello, who’s the head coach of the championship team this year.

Coming out of college, White was seen as an incredible basketball mind, dressed as a 5-foot-9 scrappy point guard. Legends of her play rivaled those of Larry Bird, at least if you want to believe former Purdue head coach Carolyn Peck, who had high praise for White when she retired in 2005 at just 27 years old. Her WNBA career did not approach the heights she reached in high school, when she set scoring records, or college, when she went on 3-point scoring sprees, but people in Indiana still loved her. Both, for the memories, and the fact that she was theirs.

On Monday, White asserted:

I’m at the point in my career where making a decision for one reason or another isn’t really good enough anymore. It’s got to be about professional opportunity. It’s got to be about the the personal opportunities and for me being near my family—and some of them are here today, including my nephew who I have only seen a few times, so it would be great to see his cute little face more often. And for my children, to be able to be around my family even more—it’s important. For those of us who have children, you don’t get those years back, right? You don’t get this time back. And my family sacrificed a lot of time with my children and for them to now be able to have them around more often, for me to be closer to home, it was really important.

White returns to the Fever, but encounters a new team, whose development was accelerated by drafting Aliyah Boston and Caitlin Clark, a pairing the coach compared to John Stockton and Karl Malone, while also joking that her players were too young to understand that reference. Stockton and Malone, of course, are one of the best playmaker-big duos in NBA history, who, for 18 seasons, carried the Utah Jazz to never-before-seen heights. That’s a high bar to set for Clark and Boston, but White is confident in both of their abilities, noting:

I think first and foremost they’re both incredibly competitive players and there’s a fire and a mentality that you can’t teach when it comes to competitive spirit and when it comes to being a great teammate, when it comes to lifting up those around you and watching both of them grow into not just the players that they are, but grow into the spotlight that they have, how they lead and how they make their teammates better, how they lift one another up, these two…are going to go down in history as the greatest and I’m excited about the opportunity to work with them. I’m excited about the opportunity that we have to build from those starting points and build for the longevity that those two could have in Indiana.

Once again, White is returning to Indiana with high expectations. The spotlight is brighter than ever before, but the franchise, the community and the state are all behind her.