We're less than a week away from the WNBA Draft and while some of the top picks seem pretty solidified, like Paige Bueckers going No. 1 and French star Dominique Malonga going in the lottery, there are still plenty of mysteries.
And if you know much about the history of the WNBA Draft, you know that there are always some weird draft picks. From Stephanie Soares going in the lottery in 2023 to the shock that was Indiana taking Kysre Gondrezick at No. 4 in 2021, there always seem to be these wildcards that go earlier than expected.
Here are the three biggest wildcards in the 2025 WNBA Draft.
Hailey Van Lith - G - TCU
Before March Madness, the consensus seemed to be that Hailey Van Lith would be a second-round pick. The TCU guard had taken steps forward in many ways in her lone season in Fort Worth, but there were still concerns about how sustainable her improved playmaking was. Van Lith averaged a career-high 5.4 assists per game while also shooting her best percentage from the field.
Now, look, I'm not someone whose entire outlook on a player changes because of a handful of games in March. I'm relatively high on Van Lith as a WNBA prospect, not because she was the driving force behind a win over Notre Dame in the Sweet 16. I'm high on her because she had a really good final season and fixed many of the things I wanted to see her fix. The Notre Dame game, where van Lith scored 26 points with nine rebounds and four assists, was a nice distillation of how HVL has played overall this season.
One thing I've mostly always loved about Van Lith's game is that she's such a tenacious player. That seemed to be lost just a bit in her year at LSU, where Kim Mulkey asked her to play more of a distributor role without the same kind of scoring green light she had had at Louisville and regained at TCU. Van Lith doesn't quit.
There's a poem by the poet Zachary Schomburg that's called "Because It Comes Right at You Does Not Mean It Comes to Save You." The content of the poem itself isn't important here, but that title makes me think of Van Lith in the WNBA. She's going to be an aggressive player who will come at defenses, who won't give up, but that doesn't necessarily mean she'll save the franchise that drafts her. She'll have to adapt to a role that looks more like her role at LSU. Will she be able to do that while still maintaining everything that makes her Hailey Van Lith?
Sania Feagin - F - South Carolina
I think the first time I've seen South Carolina's Sania Feagin on a first-round mock draft board was just a few days ago, when the AP's Doug Feinberg projected her to go No. 8 overall to the Connecticut Sun.
Feagin moved into the starting role full-time for the Gamecocks this season and responded with her best season, scoring 8.1 points on 60.1% shooting and pulling down 4.5 rebounds per game while averaging 1.5 blocks.
From a statistical perspective, Feagin doesn't really match up well with most other top prospects, but that's largely because she played on a loaded South Carolina squad, one where standing out could be difficult.
Feagin has size and great touch around the rim. She has the right tools defensively. The concern here, and what makes her such a hard prospect to get a grasp on, is that we simply don't know how her game scales up to the WNBA. South Carolina has produced some really good WNBA post players like A'ja Wilson, Aliyah Boston and Kamilla Cardoso, but there have been a few misses as well. Which category will Feagin fall into?
Sedona Prince - C - TCU
I don't want to talk about Sedona Prince, but I feel we probably have to talk about Sedona Prince.
Prince's name has been floated as a late first-rounder by a number of people. As of now, Across The Timeline shows that Prince has fallen out of most of those projections, with only the Mar. 25 ESPN update from Michael Voepel still having Prince there. In Voepel's mock, Prince goes No. 12 overall to the Wings.
While the NCAA Tournament was a boost to the draft stock of Prince's TCU teammate HVL, it seemed to destroy Prince's upside, especially after she was completely neutralized against Texas. Taylor Jones — who I wish was coming out of school in a few years when the league was expanded to 16 teams because it would help her latch onto a team — just had Prince out of it all game long, holding her to four points on 1-for-4 shooting.
The good thing about Sedona Prince is that you can't teach size. One of the bad things is that you can teach a player how to harness that size and Prince struggled to harness it against teams with strong interior defenses. It's one thing to score at will against Kansas and UCF, but against Texas and South Carolina, Prince was in hell.
There's also the off-court concerns. Maybe a team falls in love with Prince's size, but will they overlook a long history of off-court incidents.
Prince was involved in a physical altercation in January with a former girlfriend, but that was not the only incident in Prince's past. According to Mac Engel at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, four women have accused Prince of assault or sexual assault since 2019, including one in a 2022 lawsuit against Prince that was later dropped. There have also been disturbing allegations posted on TikTok detailing some of the alleged incidents involving Prince.
Whatever team drafts her will have to convince itself that the on-court and off-court concerns are worth overlooking. That makes Prince's draft placement a huge mystery. Without the off-court allegations, her size likely makes her an early second round pick, but adding in everything we know...well, who knows when — or if — Prince will hear her name called on Monday night.