Locked On Women's Basketball – Daily Podcast On The WNBA

Editor-in-Chief of The Summitt (Summitthoops.com) Howard Megdal is joined by Debbie Antonelli, the omnipresent voice of women's basketball who is on the call for Tuesday night's Connecticut-Oklahoma game at Mohegan Sun.

The game offers more than just another look at the Huskies (and the Sooners, who boast an elite inside-outside combo of Vionise Pierre-Louis and Gabby Ortiz), but also a chance for Geno Auriemma to win his 1000th game as a coach.

Antonelli, no stranger to landmark games for Hall of Fame coaches like Muffet McGraw and Pat Summitt, discussed what the numbers mean, what unites these greats of the game, and what separates each of them.

In addition, we talk about just what sets this Connecticut team apart, including the remarkable progress of Crystal Dangerfield and Kia Nurse.

Then it is on to Knoxville, where Antonelli recently took in Tennessee-Texas. She tells us whether this is the Holly Warlick team everyone has been waiting for, and we spend, oh, a good five minutes gushing over the imminent return of Joyner Holmes for Texas.

All this is prelude to an animated discussion of the Las Vegas Aces, what the city can come to mean for women's basketball, and if the reason Bill Laimbeer is smiling so much lately is that he's about to get to coach A'ja Wilson.

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After a long, successful tenure by Bill Laimbeer, the New York Liberty are now Katie Smith's team. Laimbeer said he thought it was time. The consensus around the league reinforced this.

So what does Katie Smith think? Listen and find out.

Smith discusses a broad range of topics, from what will remain the same in her charge and what will change for the Liberty, to precisely how a New York team that consistently reaches the playoffs but has yet to break into the Minnesota-Los Angeles range can take the final steps necessary to win the Liberty their first WNBA title.

Plus, Smith weighs in on the differences between coaching and dentistry (spoiler alert: there are many!), how she reconciles her all-time great play with coaching those who are simply not as accomplished as she is, and precisely how much she is going to rely on the great Tina Charles, New York's star, in 2018 and beyond.

There are plenty of reasons for optimism in the year ahead for the New York Liberty, but perhaps none as clear as the ascension of Katie Smith. Listen to her describe her plans and you'll understand why the league has been planning for Smith to coach a team since long before she even retired.

Listen to the episode here:

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For new Atlanta Dream head coach Nicki Collen, the decision to leave the Connecticut Sun was far from an easy one.

Collen, working with Curt Miller, helped shape the Sun into the next elite WNBA team in the eyes of many. But the challenge, and the opportunity to finally take ownership of a coaching job after decades in the trenches as an assistant both at the collegiate and professional level was too enticing to pass up.

The long and winding road for Collen has included stints assisting her husband, Tom, all while raising three children. But when Tom exited coaching, it led to Nicki finally getting her chance to prove herself, and she spoke about what that means to her personally and professionally.

Hear Collen discuss her early pro tennis dreams, life as a young basketball player with professional dreams, along with in-depth dissection of just how the Sun got so good so fast, and the many puzzle pieces she gets to arrange in Atlanta to bring that same success, and perhaps even more, to the Dream.

Collen on what it will mean to mentor Layshia Clarendon, build around Angel McCoughtry, even how she plans to allow Elizabeth Williams to roam free out to the three-point line and much more can all be found here.

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It's been a busy month for Lindsay Whalen, point guard for the 2017 WNBA champion Minnesota Lynx.

Whalen led her team through the WNBA playoffs, winning home games at Williams Arena, known as "The Barn that Weezy Built", per her teammate Maya Moore, University of Minnesota home court where Whalen had her glory years as an undergraduate. She was honored this past weekend by the Golden Gophers, enshrined in the athletics Hall of Fame at her alma mater.

Meanwhile, the appearances keep coming—The Ellen Show, the Vikings-Packers game, not to mention the victory parade and celebrating her tenth wedding anniversary.

So how does she balance it all? What does it actually feel like to prove Tom Wolfe wrong and go home again in a way that is usually limited to dreams?

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The news came this week that the Seattle Storm, building around the young core of Breanna Stewart and Jewell Loyd alongside icon Sue Bird, had hired an old hand at the WNBA coaching business to lead them: Dan Hughes.

For Hughes, whose epic career dates back to the earliest days of the league, it was an opportunity to overcome the disappointment he felt when the WNBA lottery balls favored Seattle over San Antonio, where he was the coach and general manager at the time.

Hughes counts working with Moriah Jefferson as a career highlight along with such accomplishments as taking San Antonio to the WNBA Finals and turning the Cleveland Rockers into the league's elite teams, but the chance to coach Stewart feels like something else altogether.

Hughes discussed an array of topics during this podcast, from whatever happened to his former assistant coach in Cleveland, one Cheryl Reeve, to the offensive and defensive goals he has for a Seattle team he says can be among the league's best, but will need to prove it.

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Two games into the 2017 WNBA Finals, no one can argue that the Minnesota Lynx and Los Angeles Sparks have failed to live up to expectations.

Both Derek James, who covers the Lynx for The Summitt, and Ben Dull, who does the same for the Sparks, have been on hand with the two teams.

They joined host Howard Megdal to discuss Rebekkah Brunson's breakout Game 2, the role Sylvia Fowles plays in the Minnesota offense, just whether it is possible to stop Chelsea Gray, the varied ways Candace Parker beats you, coaching choices and much more.

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Host Howard Megdal is joined by Lindsay Gibbs, who has covered the Washington Mystics, Ben Dull, reporter focusing on the Los Angeles Sparks, and Brendon Kleen, who has been on the Phoenix Mercury beat, to discuss the upcoming WNBA semifinals involving those three teams and, of course, the Minnesota Lynx.

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Host Howard Megdal is joined by Seattle Storm interim head coach Gary Kloppenburg, whose team has managed to steer itself out of the playoff-free ditch it found itself in just a few weeks ago, and won its first four games of the Kloppenburg era.

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It's been an unconventional rookie season for Kelsey Plum, the top overall pick in the 2017 WNBA draft by the San Antonio Stars.

But after a slow start, perpetuated by a lack of playing time, Plum is reminding everybody of the transcendent star she was during her four years playing for Mike Neighbors at University of Washington, setting scoring records while doing it with an efficiency no one has ever seen.

Last week, she collected 12 assists in one game, scored 23 points in another, and added to a remarkable stat: the Stars are 5-0 when she plays 30+ minutes, 1-21 when she doesn't.

We talk to Plum about that stat, the way her game has developed both off the ball and on the defensive end, along with an array of bigger-picture issues. Among them: what does it mean for the greater appreciation and understanding of women's basketball to have WNBA players in a video game? Exactly what does it mean when we compare women's players to men's players, and why don't we compare men's players to women's players more?

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The talent-packed USA Basketball U-23 team was picked on Friday afternoon, following the gathering of nearly two score of the most talented young basketball players in the country's pipeline.

Interestingly, only a handful of WNBA teams were on hand to watch, and a single member of the media: the omnipresent Doug Feinberg of the Associated Press, who got an inside look at the players who are about to dominate the 2017-18 NCAA season.

Feinberg spoke to us about some of the players who impressed the most at camp, with Asia Durr of Louisville, UCLA's dynamic duo of Monique Billings and Jordin Canada earning particular praise.

Feinberg talked about the 2018 WNBA prospects for all three, along with the larger ramifications of this gathering of elite talent for both USA Basketball and women's basketball at large, which he is unsurprisingly writing about.

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