Barely missing the playoffs last season puts the Utah Starzz in a precarious position for this year's WNBA Draft.
Utah picks eighth, right in the middle of the first round. The spot is good but not great and comes with high expectations but possibly limited options.
This season's draft is complicated by injuries to two of its top prospects at the end of the college season, Tennessee's Tamika Catchings and Connecticut's Svetlana Abrosimova. And earlier this week, Lauren Jackson, the leading scorer and rebounder of the silver-medalist Australian Olympic team, signed with the league and is now eligible for the draft.
Regardless, the talent in this year's draft is such that head coach Fred Williams is confident that the Starzz will be stronger after Friday morning.
What Utah does in that first round depends heavily on what happens in Seattle.
"Seattle has the first pick," Williams said. "Whatever they do is the most important thing."
Each pick is like a domino falling and will affect what teams do not just in that round but in trades and in the rest of the four rounds of selections.
The 2001 WNBA Draft begins Friday at 9:30 a.m. MDT and will be televised for the first time in league history. The first round will be on ESPN2, while the subsequent three rounds will be shown on NBC.com TV.
Williams' strategy is simple. "We'll be looking for the best available athlete at that position," he said.
Those he believes who will up for grabs when Utah picks its first player are Marie Ferdinand, a 5-foot-9 guard from Louisiana State University; Kelly Miller, a 5-9 guard from Georgia; Catchings, a 6-1 forward; Semeka Randall, a 5-10 guard and Tennessee teammate of Catchings; and maybe even Jackie Stiles, a 5-8 guard from Southwest Missouri State.
While lacking in height, Stiles would be a coup for Utah to acquire. The NCAA All-time scoring leader who averaged 30 points last season, Catchings tore her ACL in January and is questionable for the upcoming WNBA season. She was twice named the NCAA's player of the year.
Miller is a point guard who averaged about 15 points per game and was the SEC player of the year the past two seasons. She led her team to the Final Four in 1999 and the Elite Eight in 2000.
Ferdinand averaged 21.1 points in 2000-01 and was an All-American as a senior. She was an All-SEC pick the past two seasons.
Perhaps the most unknown and underrated player Utah is looking at is Randall. She's played in Catchings' shadow but is regarded as the team's "emotional yardstick" and is a excellent defensive player. Some inconsistent offensively, Randall picked up the slack in scoring when Catchings was injured.
Whether any of these athletes wears a Starzz uniform is all supposition, and maybe even day-dreaming. But that's what the draft is all about, regardless of the sport: finding a potential player pick who finishes a team, provides the edge or fills a void.
"Funny things can happen," Williams said. "Who knows? Ruth Riley (a 6-5 center from this year's NCAA champions, Notre Dame) may still be there."
Williams said he and his coaching staff have ranked players and come up with what their best options are in several different scenarios. But because it's difficult to predict seven different moves, almost anything can happen.
The Starzz have ranked all of the players available overall and in their respective positions.
"It gets very difficult when you get past the second and third rounds," he said, adding that parity among the players makes it more difficult to distinguish between them. What a team's specific needs are becomes much more important.
Outlining draft scenarios is even more difficult, Williams said. "It changes almost everyday with information from other teams."
The WNBA will have about 13 players in studio during the draft, and Utah's choice is likely among them.
They are: the aforementioned group of Jackson, Riley, Stiles, Abrosimova, Catchings, Ferdinand and Miller, as well as Notre Dame's Niele Ivey, North Carolina's LaQuanda Barksdale, Purdue's Katie Douglas and Coco Miller, Kelly Miller's twin sister who also played at Georgia.
The WNBA's fifth season begins on May 28 with a televised rematch of the Western Conference championship between the Los Angeles Sparks and the Houston Comets.
E-MAIL: adonaldson@desnews.com