There's no alumna in Michigan women's basketball history that needs less introduction than Naz Hillmon. Given Michigan's historic lack of ... promotion ... of WBB, giving an introduction still wouldn't hurt. She is the only first-team All-America and the only Big Ten Player Of The Year in Michigan WBB history, the only player to score 50 points in a game, and the unquestioned leader behind the team's only Elite Eight appearance in 2022. While her jersey will be the second women's jersey raised to the Crisler rafters, it'll be the first one that's not long overdue¹.

Though Hillmon is already Michigan's most successful representative in the WNBA by far, I thought her ceremony would be a good time to look back at the players who had a shot at the W over the years. Michigan lists nine players drafted into the league, while two others made appearances more indirectly. Most of Michigan's draftees were from the early years of the league, which overlapped with Sue Guevara's time as Michigan head coach. The WNBA had 16 teams and a four-round draft until 2002, which gave players of the era more opportunities without going overseas. Let's remember (or, to be frank, finally hear about for the first time) some good players.

Pollyanna Johns Kimbrough, 1998, Charlotte Sting (3rd round, 27th overall pick)

The nine highest single-season shooting percentages in Michigan history belong to Hillmon, Hallie Thome, and Johns Kimbrough, who averaged a double-double in her junior season and 17 points and 9.5 boards in her senior season. She was the first Michigan player to make an all-Big Ten First Team, and still hold the program record with 9.6 rebounds per game. After playing limited minutes for Charlotte and Cleveland from 1998-2001, the Bahamian big started 30 games for the 2002 Miami Sol, putting up 7.0/4.5 per game. The Sol folded after the 2002 season and she ended up back in Cleveland in 2003, only for the Rockers to also fold. She played her last year in the W with Houston and finished with 134 games played over 6 years.

Stacey Thomas, 2000, Portland Fire (2nd round, 23rd)

Thomas is still Michigan's all-time steals leader and still also the only WNBA champion among Michigan players, as she was a deadline-pickup depth piece for the Shock in 2003. Thomas played for the original Fire for all three years of their existence, appearing in every game for the franchise. She retired before the 2006 season, and KBA has pushed for jersey ceremonies for her and Thome.

Anne Thorius, 2001, Orlando Miracle (4th round, 58th)

Thorius is still second all-time (to Siera Thompson) with 537 career assists at Michigan. She never played in the WNBA, returning to Europe instead. As a member of the Polish side Lotos Gdynia, she played in the 2001-02 Euroleague finals. She eventually returned home to Denmark, playing on the national team and in the domestic league until 2010.

Layne Ingram, 2002, Sacramento Monarchs (3rd round, 44th)

The biggest win of Sue Guevara's tenure as head coach at Michigan (and arguably the biggest win in program history before KBA) was beating Virginia 81-71 in OT in the first round of the 2001 NCAA tournament. The 5'7" Ingram had only scored five at halftime, but finished with 27 points, 8 rebounds, and 7 assists. Waived during training camp by the Monarchs, he worked various coaching and admin jobs before settling in at Lansing Community College, where he coached the women's basketball team for several years, along with many other roles. In 2021, he received the Outsports Coaching Triumph Award.

Jennifer Smith, 2004, Detroit Shock (3rd round, 32nd)

The 6'5" Smith set the Michigan single-season scoring record (at the time) with 659 points in 2003-2004. Her entire W career was 7 minutes for the Liberty in 2005 and I couldn't find any transaction data indicating how she got from the Shock to the Liberty. She also spent time overseas playing for Good Angels Košice in Slovakia. Smith is now head coach at Great Lakes Christian College in Delta Charter Township.

Tabitha Pool, 2005, New York Liberty (2nd round, 23rd)

Ann Arbor Huron product Pool had 26 double-doubles over four years at Michigan. She never played in the W (though Getty does have a picture of her in a Liberty uniform.) I couldn't find much info about what she was up to after graduating from Michigan, other than what was on the sketchy personal info sites, which we shall ignore.

After Pool, there is a long period before Michigan gets another draft pick. Two main reasons for this: as already mentioned, the league contracted in the mid-2000s, making the leap from college became a lot harder as roster spots came to be dominated by veterans. Also, following Sue Guevara's departure, the program took a nosedive. Cheryl Burnett could not replicate her success at (Southwest) Missouri State, and while Kevin Borseth brought some stability and respectability back to the program, it wasn't until several years into KBA's tenure that Michigan became a perennial tournament participant. KBA's early stars like Thome and Flaherty have successful investment careers. We don't see a return to the W until we get to this week's honoree.

Naz Hillmon, 2022, Atlanta Dream (2nd round, 15th)

Over four years at Michigan, Naz attempted six threes, and made none of them. In her first three years with the Dream, she attempted six more threes, and made one of them. Both Hillmon and the Dream were scuffling along until last year, when new head coach Karl Smesko took over and Naz unveiled her three-point shot. 53 x3 points later, the Dream finished first in the Eastern Conference and Naz won Sixth Player Of The Year. In previous offseasons, Naz has played in the WNBL for the Melbourne Boomers and Southside Flyers, but this offseason she's with the Laces in Unrivaled. I'm confident she won't be wearing a green Laces jersey to her ceremony.

Leigha Brown, 2023, Atlanta Dream (2nd round, 15th)

Brown was traded to Connecticut before the 2023 season and appeared in 25 games for the Sun, averaging just over 5 minutes and just under a point per game. Waived during 2024 training camp, she has played for AE Sedis Bàsquet in Urgell, Spain, Explosivas de Moca in Puerto Rico, and Elitzur Holon in Israel.

Jordan Hobbs, 2025, Seattle Storm (3rd round, 34th)

Hobbs was a victim to how it's nearly impossible it is to break into the W as a third-rounder, and waived by the Storm before the season started. She's playing for San Martino di Lupari in Serie A1 of the Italian league, where she plays with Wisconsin-Italian legend Rae Lin d'Alie and has a much nicer podcast background wall than Maddie Nolan. Most importantly, she is the person mentioned in the post most likely to actually stumble across it and thus is brilliant and talented.

These nine are Michigan's only W draftees so far. Maybe that will change soon. Dallas might smarten up and take BQD first overall if there even is a draft this spring, but they'll probably waste the pick of Azzi Fudd or someone less talented. However, in addition to the players above, there are two others who took more circuitous routes to the league:

• Cyesha Goree is Michigan's all-time single-season rebound leader, putting up 367 in 2014-15. She had 31 double-doubles over the course of her career. Despite that, she was undrafted and went overseas to play with Uni Győr MÉLY-ÚT in Hungary. Goree became a Hungarian citizen and joined the national team: in 2023, she lead the team to a fourth-place finish at Eurobasket, average 14.8 points and 6.8 rebounds per game. This lead to hear earning a hardship contract with the Mystics after the tournament, where she played a total of 116 minutes over 10 games, and averaged 3.9 PPG.
• Hillmon and Brown and not, technically, the highest-drafted players in Michigan program history. Kysre Gondrezick, who played one year at Michigan before transferring to West Virginia, was drafted 4th overall by Indiana in 2021. After shooting under 30% over 19 games in her rookie year, she was waived by the Fever; three years later, she made a brief cameo for the Sky, not exactly the best run of organizations. She was planning to make another comeback with Athletes Unlimited this year, but tore her Achilles in a training workout before the season. That's a TMZ link, which should tell you she's gained notoriety off the court, too.

Can I Predict Ball?

You can't predict ball. Ball can only be apportioned out by the cosmos.

UCLA 69, Michigan 66

Vibes-based prediction: Well, I don't have a plan. I assume KBA has a plan! There are only three squares that aren't bright green on UCLA's team box on Torvik: free throw rate (whatever), opponent's free throw percentage (that doesn't help!), and defensive turnover rate. For Michigan to pull this off, they will need to decisively win the turnover battle to get the advantage in shot volume. The other path to staying ahead on shot volume, rebounding, seems harder to pull off against Betts...

Michigan took 13 more shots than the Bruins (71 to 58), won the turnover battle (13 to 9) and even kept it close on the boards (38 to 41). The path to the upset was there, if one or two more of those shots had fallen.

As for saying it would be hard to win the rebounding battle against Lauren Betts, it has to be the funniest single-game stat of the year that Brooke Q. Daniels had six offensive rebounds, while Betts only had five.

Needlessly cynical very specific prediction: UCLA wins, 72-69.

It's not good to be cynical. But if you have to be cynical, you have to be the right amount of cynical. Just say "three-point loss."

Michigan 80, Northwestern 58

Vibes-based prediction: ...Michigan comes out a bit slow and the game is annoyingly close for a while, but in the end it's a comfortable win. But the transition from annoyingly close to comfortable will happen in the first half, and everyone will have a mostly pleasant time.

I didn't count on two things, one of which I should have foreseen and one unexpected. The team has struggled closing out first halves a lot recently, and Northwestern's 9-0 run to end the half felt like the same old same-old. That run put the Wildcats up 37-31, but that score would not have looked so bad had they not inexplicably gone 5-6 from three. (40% of Tayla Thomas's threes for the entire season came in the first half.) In the second half, Northwestern only hit one three-pointer and means were regressed to, etc.

All in all, the time was partly pleasant.

Very specific prediction: [Caroline] Lau finishes with a 1:1 assist-to-turnover ratio.

I owe Syla a solid for knocking Lau out of the game a hard foul with 3:18 to go, making sure she would finish the game with 6 assists and 6 turnovers. Or maybe it took a minute for her soul to finishing fleeing her body after Mila sent it flying:

The Week Ahead

I added usage indicators with the Torvik numbers: Olivia Olson is green because she has moderately high usage (25.5%), BQD is red because hers is low (14.9%, offensive rebounds don't factor into the usage calculation). Everyone else in the big seven has about average usage, indicated by various shades of yellow.

Michigan State (2/15, 4:00 EST, FS1, Mich -11.7 Torvik)

Events have not been going State's way since we last saw them two weeks ago. Double-digit losses to a resurgent Maryland squad and an angry UCLA sandwiched perhaps the most concerning result of all, a juiceless 81-70 win over a Gracie Merkle-less Penn State. The Spartans trailed by as many as 16 before going on a 20-0 run in the third and fourth quarters to finally tilt the score in their direction.

Of course, a rivalry game means we can throw those records off the shelf. It doesn't hurt that UCLA beat them so thoroughly that everyone could relax for the entire second half and start conserving energy for Sunday. Sparty is out to get even and I'm sure that not only will they be annoying again, they'll be annoying in completely different ways than they were two weeks ago.

The team sheet is mostly unchanged. After the previous matchup, I reluctantly have to admit that Kennedy Blair has that dawg in her, but I chose to indicate this with the most annoying dawg I could think of.

Players to Watch

• Emma Shumate took three! whole! two-pointers! against UCLA. She even made one. The usage indicator is very helpful here, showing that her sharpshooting is a function of not shooting that often.
• Neither Marah Dykstra or Amy Terrian played against Michigan in the previous matchup, but they've both played 10+ minutes in the last two games. We'll see if they get into the rotation this time, or whether Robyn Fralick tightens it up again.
• Grace vanSlooten will keep on slootin'.
• Should anyone connected to the team read this, I’d like to remind them that Rashunda Jones made the Naismith DPOY watchlist, while BQD did not.

Vibes based prediction: Michigan is going to address the flaws exposed two weeks ago; I'm pretty sure Syla Swords won't have seven turnovers again, and the team as a whole will be much better at hanging on to the ball. But State will pick up in another area (my guess is rebounding) and keep the game within single digits. I think they’ll definitely want to ruin Naz’s day, and they'll make it less fun they we all want, but they don’t quite have the horses.

Very specific prediction: Kennedy Blair and Jalyn Brown both scored 21 points the first time around. Neither will hit double digits this time.

Stretch Run

No second game this week. A much-need break before the final stretch run at Iowa, at Ohio State, and finishing with Senior Day vs. Maryland. Hoopla reports that Michigan has a 94.9% chance of getting a double bye in the Big Ten tournament, and a 63.6% change of finishing with the #2 seed. They're also the only team with more than a 0.1% chance of swiping the top seed from UCLA, if the Bruins somehow lose at home to Indiana or Wisconsin.

Every bracket prediction I see currently puts the Wolverines on the #2 line, though no one agrees on whose region they'll end up in. With Vanderbilt knocking Texas out of a top seed in some brackets, the chances of setting up a potential Elite Eight rematch are now pretty high.