Why former UConn players thrive with WNBA’s Seattle Storm
Evina Westbrook became the seventh UConn women’s basketball player in history to be drafted by the Seattle Storm when she was picked in the second round of the WNBA Draft earlier this month.
The Storm has long been a West Coast home for the Huskies. Not only has the team featured two of the greatest to ever play the sport — Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart — but the franchise has mirrored UConn’s long history of winning with a WNBA record four titles.
As training began this week, four former Huskies are wearing the Seattle green and yellow: Westbrook, Bird, Stewart, and Gabby Williams.
“Seattle Huskies,” Stewart said during a media Zoom call Wednesday afternoon after the team’s third day of training camp.
The 2022 season is likely to be Bird’s last after she’s spent all 20 years of her WNBA career in Seattle. The 41-year-old led the team to the second round of the playoffs last year — falling to former UConn teammate Diana Taurasi and the Phoenix Mercury — despite a mid-season coaching change and spending three weeks in Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics.
Stewart, who welcomed her first daughter days after helping Bird and Team USA win gold, enters her sixth year in the WNBA after spending the offseason recovering from a minor Achilles surgery. The four-time NCAA Champion with the Huskies missed the final two games of the regular season and Seattle’s postseason run last fall because of the foot injury.
Meanwhile, this summer will be the first in Seattle for both Westbrook and Williams.
Williams was suspended from Chicago and then traded to Los Angeles last spring due to her commitment for playing on the French National Team ahead of the Olympics. Seattle then traded Los Angeles fellow former Husky Katie Lou Samuelson for Williams during the offseason. Williams has yet to join the Storm for training camp as she concludes competition playing overseas in Spain.
Westbrook’s addition to Seattle was made official in this year’s draft, when she was selected No. 21 overall by the Storm.
“I was personally excited for us to draft Evina,” Stewart said. “I think that she’s a player that can obviously affect the game on both ends. She’s smart. She’s kinda been through it all on and off the court, and just gives us a new presence that we need.”
The fifth-year senior will graduate from UConn in the coming weeks after finishing her coursework online while she’s in Seattle.
Getting drafted by Seattle was a dream come true for the Oregonian.
“I’m in an amazing situation, not only just to play with them (Bird and Stewart) but I’m also the closest I’ve ever been to home,” Westbrook said. “Just to be around them on and off the court is honestly, it’s a blessing and just to be on the same (court), play with them and be their teammates, it’s pretty awesome.”
Seattle coach Noelle Quinn said Westbrook has been playing primarily point guard during the team’s opening days of camp. While it’s a position Westbrook last played during her freshman and sophomore seasons at Tennessee (she transferred to UConn prior to her junior year), both Quinn and Bird have been impressed with her versatility to play any of the guard positions on both sides of the ball .
“She’s a big guard, able to see over defenses,” Quinn said. “What’s very great about E is that she’s able to play every guard spot. So, the versatility on the offensive end but her ability to guard multiple positions and I think in our league if you have, not obviously a skill set, but a specific skill set, specific skill set is important, but players that have some versatility to their game stick on teams and find ways to be effective in our league.”
Westbrook said the adjustment to the WNBA-level practices and scrimmages has been challenging, but she’s enjoying the ability to learn from so many of the league’s all-time veterans.
“It’s been a huge adjustment so far,” Westbrook said. “I feel like in every drill and everything that we’re doing, I’m messing it up or doing it wrong. But I got these two (Bird and Stewart) here along with the other vets helping all of us out, because they’ve been through it. They’ve been rookies once, so they totally understand what it’s like.”
The 6-foot guard is deterred by the new level of intensity and skill set. She credits UConn and coach Geno Auriemma for preparing her for the professional world.
“We have the same type of pedigree coming from Connecticut, coach (Auriemma) does get us ready with everything that we’ve been through, last year just a lot, but on the court, it’s the same throughout the years,” she said . “I felt ready to come in. I just knew it was going to be a big change and it has been. But it’s just about adjusting each and every day and they’ve been telling us that.”
Bird and Stewart agree.
“The program, I know they haven’t won in a couple years but one thing they do is get people ready for the WNBA,” Bird said. “So, you knew with a player, like Evina, she was going to be ready, hungry.
“Her ability to play multiple positions out there, I think there is so much to her game that hasn’t even been tapped into it that now that she’s a pro, she’s gonna start to tap into that, we’re gonna see even more from her so it’s exciting.”
But more than priming talent on the court, the program also creates a lasting connection outside of basketball.
“There is a UConn connection because no matter who plays together or not, it’s a family and (we) just want to continue helping her along with this process as she helps us,” Stewart said.