When you start in the middle of something, you take some things for granted. You forget how much work was done before you joined, how many games have been played that you didn't pay attention to, how many practices you didn't see. Sports, especially college sports, involve an endless cycle of rebirth, as new players and storylines replace the old, new strategies develop, new tiny advantages are found.

As we enter the second season of my Michigan WBB newsletter, there's a lot of ground to cover and it's caused me to reflect on all the things that were just given or settled when I started midseason last year. I could find player photos on ESPN by December last year; this year, we're several days into the season and they'll still stuck on last year's. Statistics databases aren't complete yet: Bart Torvik doesn't have full rosters yet and, of course, early season advanced stats are basically meaningless. (I do not think Hannah Hidalgo will maintain her T-Rank of 16.0 over the course of a whole season.)

But the work is being done, the team is opening the season with a bang, and expectations and hopes are high. Let's start with an update on a busy offseason, and then preview the big game and the not-so-big one.

Offseason Transactions

The Traditional Way

5'10" guard Devin Cosgriff (Livermore, CA) spent her high school years climbing the Bay Area Catholic hierarchy, spending her freshman and sophomore years at Oakland's Bishop O'Dowd and then finishing her career at Archbishop MItty in San Jose. At Mitty, her teammates includes top-10 incoming Iowa freshman McKenna Woliczo and 2027 Washington commit Ze'ni Patterson. Cosgriff received her first offer in seventh grade (from Wagner) and picked up her Michigan offer, along with offers from UCLA, Ohio State, and others, in 2022. Of course, she didn't commit right away, and picked the Wolverines last July. Some recruiting articles report that she is the niece of Dontrelle Willis ^{[citation needed]} – in any case, may her time in southeast Michigan go better than his did.

Fope Ayo (Amherst, MA), on the other hand, was a late riser who didn't pick up a basketball until the summer of 2020. According to the Bay State Banner, she was at Wal-Mart and AAU coach Scott Hazelton approached her and asked her to join the Mass Rivals. I suppose those are the sort of things that happen when you grow to be 6'5". Those of us with traumatic memories of Texas's Kyla Oldacre being just too big for Michigan to handle in the Elite Eight have to be excited to have a BIG big. Of course, all the caveats regarding raw freshman bigs being ready to play apply even more to late risers like Ayo. Hopefully, she can grow over the course of the year and contribute key minutes in the spring. Ayo chose Michigan over her other finalists: Miami (FL), Stanford, and South Carolina, all programs we'll have reason to talk about before long.

The Michigan Daily, of course, is on it for more punctually than I am, with an article how the freshmen are finding their footing.

They'll be replacing Alyssa Crockett, who signed with the newly promoted Basket Costa Masnaga of the Legabasket Femminile in Italy. The 2026-27 season is Costa's first in Serie A1, Italy's top division, since 2021-22. Through four matches, Crockett is averaging 13.5 points and 6.2 rebounds per game. Last year's other graduating senior, Ally vanTimmeren, appears to be going pro in something other than sports.

The New Normal Way

After a freshman year hampered by a concussion and difficulty cracking the guard rotation, McKenzie Mathurin transferred closer to her Tulsa-area home and signed with Kellie Harper's program at Missouri. Joining the SEC ensures that, for the next three years, the Missouri-Vanderbilt game will be the Aubrey (Galvan)-Mathurin matchup, to the delight of Michigan's finest dad jokesters. May we hear more about Mathurin than any other player associated with the Missouri program.

Transferring in for Mathurin is Courtney Ogden, who escaped Stanford's Sadness Startup along with fellow 2025-26 starters Nunu Agara (now with Maryland) and Chloe Clardy (UNC). It seems like whatever questionable motivational techniques worked for Tara VanDerveer over the decades are no longer working for Kate Paye and the new coaching staff. Just goes to show the importance of actually winning games (and not having to travel three time zones for conference games).

The Bucket Problem noted that Ogden's hits mid-range shots with high accuracy, often making something out of possessions that are breaking down (go there for actual analysis).

The 2026 Way

Brooke Quarles-Daniels was all set to go the traditional way. Two years at Oakland + two years at Michigan = one legendary career. But then!

• June 23: the NCAA announced the "five-in-five" rule, meaning that student-athletes can now play in up to five seasons after graduating high school. For some reason, the five-in-five rule does not apply to the high school class of 2022, so BQD is still not eligible.
• June 25: Michigan announces signing a player 2026-style (scroll down for that), which suggests they're not counting on BQD coming back, but there is still an open spot on the roster.
• July 8: The lawsuits begin! Northern Colorado basketball player Brock Wisne is the named plaintiff in Wisne v. NCAA, the first of many lawsuits asking for a fifth year of eligibility for the 2022 class.
• July 31: Judge Charlotte Sweeney grants a preliminary injunction in favor of Wisne, which means that BQD is potentially eligible again.
• August 7: South Carolina point guard announces she is withdrawing from the team and the university for mental health reasons. This did not seem relevant at the time.
• August 18: Quarles-Daniels is a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit, Glancey v. NCAA, and receives a temporary injuction making her, specifically eligible.
• Also August 18: Talia Goodman at ON3 reports that BQD has entered the transfer portal.
• August 25: The SEC, following the Big Ten, announces a rule saying players who have signed a pro contract cannot return to the league. While it's known as the "Fuck Lane Kiffin" rule, it applies to players who were drafted by or signed with a WNBA team.
• August 28: Dawn Staley posts "A birdie just flew in the nest! 😍😍😍" on some awful microblogging website.
• Also August 28: South Carolina announces signing Quarles-Daniels.

I am not a lawyer, or a journalist, or even remotely competent, but I think this is what happened. Due to McDaniel's late depature, South Carolina needed to find a guard in a hurry and a raft of fifth-year players were suddenly available. Some other rumored options, like Texas A&M's Ny'Ceara Pryor, had attended WNBA training camps and were too much of an eligibility risk. Quarles-Daniels was Goldilocks: veteran enough to step in right away, but not a strong enough pro prospect to have lost eligibility that way.

From BQD's standpoint, the choice had to be clear: if Dawn Staley calls you up and asks you to take one last ride, you take one last ride.

The one tragedy in all this is that, because she had added the hyphen to her last name, the stats broadcast now lists her name as "QUARLES-DANIELS" instead of "Q. DANIELS, BRO."

Somewhere in that timeline, I said Michigan added a player, and that player is Australian Dallas Loughridge. First thing to know: it's pronounced 🔒-ridge. Despite still being only 22 years old, she has played three seasons in Australia's top women's league, the WNBL. It would have been four if she had not torn her ACL just before the 2022-23 season. In her two years with the Southside (Melbourne) Flyers and one year with the Adelaide Lightning, she played alongside WNBA players like Lauren Jackson, Nyadiew Puoch, Stephanie Tablot, and even Naz Hillmon. How does her signing with Michigan not run afoul of the Big Ten's version of the "Fuck Lane Kiffin" rule? I have no idea, it's 2026, just roll with it.

But is she any good, you wonder? Well, in the 2025-26 season, Loughridge averaged 16.3 PPG, which was good for sixth in the WNBL. Four of the five players ahead of her (Izzy Borlase, Mackenzie Holmes, Miela Sowah, and Sania Feagin) played in the WNBA this year. Former Big Ten players in the league include Nebraska's Jaz Shelley and Isabelle Bourne, as well as Iowa's Lucy Olsen. She outscored all of them. When Loughridge announced that she wouldn't be playing for Adelaide this season, the Lightning signed last year's Indiana scoring leader, Shay Ciezki, to replace her.

Advanced stats from Australian leagues are not readily available, so I can't say much as to how she plays defensive, but reports from Michigan practices are that she "brings the intensity" on that side of the ball.

Here's an ESPN article about her Yorta Yorta heritage. Her great-grandmother was heavily involved with rodeo in Australia!

The Coaching Way

Natalie Achonwa left Michigan after the season to take an assistant coach role under Sonia Raman with the Seattle Storm. To replace her in the assistant coach/general manager role, Kim Barnes Arico brought in Sean Bair, who had spent the previous two seasons as an assistant at Penn State. It's hard to evaluate assistant coaches in the wreck of Carolyn Kieger's tenure, but Bair's official bio gives him credit for developing forwards and post players like Gracie Merkle. Also, getting Loughridge on campus seems like some good general managing got done over the summer.

Pro Blue

Australian players also play in the semi-professional NBL1 during their winter months. Loughridge played most of the 2026 season with the Casey Cavaliers before pulling out with a few games left to head to Ann Arbor. Over 19 games, she averaged 25.8 PPG (!) and 5.3 assists per game with a 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio. At this level, we can compare her performance to some Wolverines of yore:

• Emily Kiser averaged a double-double (20.4 PPG, 11.9 RPG) for the Rockhampton Cyclones after spending the previous season with Alba Berlin.
• Nicole Munger, who had a big leap after moving to Australia, put up 20.3 PPG and 5.7 APG for the Newcastle Falcons. She was also a Sixth Woman of the Year finalist for the UC Capitals in the WNBL and has returned there for the 2026-27 season
• Greta Kampschroeder's Warwick Senators won the NBL1 West championship. She put up 12.8 PPG on a well-balanced team; her teammates included Jayda Clark, who joined Texas for the upcoming season. Kampshroeder has also been playing in Germany for BC Marburg.

As mentioned at the top, Alyssa Crockett is in the top Italian League. She also surprised BQD when South Carolina was playing in Paris. Jordan Hobbs played for San Martino di Lupari in the Italian league last year and signed a training camp contract with the Chicago Sky in April, but was cut in the preseason. (There is, of course, no shame in being cut by the Chicago Sky.) This winter, she is playing for Hozono Jairis in the Spanish LF Endesa, where she's leading the team with 11.1 PPG after seven matches.

Naz Hillmon's Atlanta Dream advanced to the WNBA Finals, where they lost in seven games. As this missive is about Michigan, I will pretend I was disappointed. She will also be playing in Unrivaled again this winter, moving from the Laces to the Hive.

Various Summer Bullets

• Because Canada's senior women's national team, to put in delicately, shit the bed in World Cup qualifying in March, they were shunted to the Olympics Pre-Qualifying Tournament in August in Guadalajara, Mexico. Both Syla Swords and Mila Holloway trained with the national team and played in a warm-up "W'HOOP IT UP" match against UCLA in Victoria, B.C. Syla lead Canada with 14 points but only on 5-16 shooting, while Mila added 8, as Canada won 69-55.
• Mila did not play in the Mexico tournament, but Syla led Canada to a perfect 5-0 record, averaging 14.8 PPG and 45% 3PT shooting, and was named trounament MVP.
• Olivia Olson was one of nine players selected for the Future is Unrivaled Summit in Miami; the only other Big Ten player selected was Ohio State's Jaloni Cambridge.

Around the B1G: Who's Already Out for the Year?

Professional writers who did previews of the Big Ten season tried to rank the teams 1 through 18, a foolish errand when the difference between a double first-round bye in the Big Ten Tournament and a double-digit seed may be as thin and fragile as your least favorite cruciate ligament. I will not risk being so precise, but instead divide the teams into four tiers:

• Very Good: USC, Michigan, Iowa
• Bad: Penn State, Purdue
• Bad, but frisky: Northwestern, Rutgers
• Meh: Wisconsin
• Good: everyone else

When trying to distinguish between the good and very good, injury luck and recovery time are going to be just as important as talent, and the B1G is already missing a lot of key players:

• Oregon's Sofia Bell was announced out for the year on September 29 with a lower-body injury suffered in practice. A three-point specialist on offense with low usage and a defensive stopper, she is the archetypal "more than the numbers" player.
• UCLA already lost their top six players to graduation, and then lost one of their few returning players, sophomore Lena Bilić, to an ACL tear. (I appreciate them saying "ACL tear" and not the mysterious "lower-body injury"). The Bruins had already reloaded through the portal, and early signs indicate major offseason improvement for Sienna Betts, so they may be better able to manage the loss of a key contributor.
• Tori McKinney led Minnesota in scoring and steals last year, but suffered a season-ending knee injury. The Gophers have a staple of incoming freshman guards (and UCF transfer Leah Harmon) and will need one of them to step up into a rotational role.

Michigan is heavily affected by two injuries but neither has been announced as season-ending. Macy Brown tore her ACL in March and has been participating in limited drills. Mila Holloway suffered from an unspecified lower-body injury in September and has no timeline for returning; most scuttlebutt seems to suggest she could be back by February or March, but when dealing with the notoriously secretive Michigan athletic department, you can't be too sure of anything.

The Week Ahead

The starting lineup is the same one from Michigan's exhibition last week against NAIA Rochester Christian. There's not too much to be learned from a 115-24 victory except that it's fun to beat teams by 91 points. Delfosse and Dudley looked like they developed a lot over the summer, but we'll see soon enough because...

Connecticut (11/5, 6:30 EST, FS1)

When we last saw Geno Auriemma, he was flipping out because he didn't get a handshake or something. Over the summer, we also learned his secret to motivating Paige Bueckers in a new documentary (it's being a huge asshole, which as we established when talking about Stanford, is something you can get away with when you win 1,000 games).

Will any of that rage-ahol affect UConn in 2027? It hasn't so far. The incoming freshmen are looking extremely strong. Jovana Popovic started all three exhibition games for the Huskies and put up 19 points against Cornell in their official season opener. Olivia Vukosa was the #2 ranked recruit by ESPN and the top ranked post player; as a big, she's not starting right away but there are high expectations that she could supplant Jana El Alfy in the starting lineup by the end of the year.

Despite losing Serah Williams and #1 draft pick Azzi Fudd to graduation, the Huskies still have three players on the preseason Naismith Award watchlist. Sarah Strong, of course, is the reigning Naismith Winner, Wade Trophy winner, AP Player of the Year, and USBWA National Player of the Year, due to her frustratingly being good at everything (even three-point shooting, where she went 61/151). Joining her on the watchlist are point guard KK Arnold, who averaged 4.6 assist per game and a 4-1 A/TO ratio, and Blanca Quiñonez, who has been coming off the bench while recovering from off-season shoulder surgery. All three of them are defensive menaces who rack up a ton of steals; Mila Holloway may be very sorely missed.

Rounding out the guard rotation are three players that would be leading this section for almost any other team: Ashlynn Shade, Kayleigh Heckel (Syla's high school teammate), and three-point specialist Allie Ziebell. Marine Dursus played 17 minutes against Cornell; we may see her as well if the Huskies need to go deep.

Keys to the Game: Hold on to the dang ball. We're going to learn a lot fast and the first question will be: who can run the point until Holloway returns? Both Swords and Loughridge have experience but have primarily be deployed as shooting guards. The other big question will be: has anyone made the leap? Are Delfosse and Dudley as good as the talk suggests? Will having a full season of B1G experience help Ashley Sofilkanich stay on the court longer? Will any of the freshman or deep bench players be able to hold their own for 5-10 minutes?

Vibes-based, yet very specific prediction: Michigan hasn't played a real game yet so I have very little to base this on. I think the path of victory for Michigan is essentially to play Nakase-ball: swarming defense, careful, patient offense, and hope enough clutch threes drop. The vibes were decided on Tuesday: Wolverines by 7.

Wright State (11/8, 2:00 EST, B1G+)

Hopefully this will be a "stay wright" game and not a "get wright" game after UConn. The Raiders are coming off a 10-22 season, though they did seem a bit competitive in a 73-71 season opening loss at Loyola-Chicago. Their best returning player is sharpshooter Rylee Sangster, who shot 39% from 3 on volume. Two of their transfers were big contributors on Monday: Louisiana Tech transfer Jayden Terry was inserted into the starting lineup and managed seven steals, while uptransfer Allie Daniels, from West Virginia Wesleyan, put up 15 points and 7 boards.

Vibes-based prediction, kind of specific prediction: Between 90 and 100 points for Michigan if they beat UConn, over 100 if they don't.