Monday night was the 2023 WNBA Draft, and the Dallas Wings added six new players, including four first-round picks.
The Wings selected Villanova’s Maddy Siegrist (third overall), UConn’s Lou Lopez Senechal (fifth overall), and Maryland’s Abby Meyers (11th overall) in the first round. They traded for fourth overall pick Stephanie Soares, whom the Washington Mystics drafted out of Iowa State.
Dallas also added Iowa State’s Ashley Joens in the second round and Illinois State’s Paige Robinson in the third.
“Coming into the draft, the last really unchecked box for us, as we went through the transactional period of the offseason, was shooting,” Wings President and CEO Greg Bibb told the media in a press conference on Monday night. “If you look at our Draft class this year, it should be evident we prioritized shooting, and I feel very good about the talent we added to the roster.”
Siegrist fits the mold of the shooters the Wings sought to acquire. She led the country with 29.2 points per game at Vilanova last season, shooting 51% from the field and 36.1% from three-point range. Siegrist averaged more than 20 points per game in three of her four years for the Wildcats to become a top WNBA prospect.
Soares is more of an unknown, with just 13 games of Division I experience, but she excelled at the NAIA level and with Team Brazil in the FIBA Championships. Bibb said Soares would likely miss the season with a knee injury, giving her time to adjust to the pro game from an off-the-court standpoint.
Dallas traded a 2024 second-round pick and a 2025 first-round pick to Washington to acquire Soares’ draft rights.
Lopez Senechal adds more shooting to the lineup, having shot 44% from behind the arc in her lone season at UConn after transferring from Fairfield. She played five collegiate seasons and shot above 40% in each of the past three seasons. She averaged 16 points in her career.
Meyers is coming off the two best shooting seasons of her career, averaging 17.9 points for Princeton in 2021 before transferring to Maryland and averaging 14.3 as a Second-Team All-Big Ten player in her final season. She is also a plus defender with a knack for coming up with steals.
Joens is a three-time Cheryl Miller Award winner, given to the best women’s basketball small forward. She finished the 2022-23 season ninth in the NCAA with 21.6 points per game. She has shot 40% or better from the field in each of her college seasons and is the reigning Big 12 Player of the Year and a multi-selection All-American.
Robinson averaged 18.3 points and shot 38.4% from three-point range in her only season at the Division I level, becoming the first player from Illinois State to get drafted into the WNBA and the first Redbird to enter the league since 2009.
The Wings will begin training camp on April 30, and the regular season will start with a home game against the Atlanta Dream on May 20.