Olivia Miles might have been playing this weekend along with WNBA rookie Paige Bueckers at the league’s All-Star Game.<\/p>\n
But Miles decided to return to college this year instead of going to the WNBA draft as a projected lottery pick. The former Notre Dame star transferred to TCU to try to improve her game, earn some extra NIL money and continue to grow her brand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was a mixture of me listening to my body and what I needed and also just another year to develop, you know be in a system where it\u2019ll favor me and I\u2019ll have great teammates and a great coach around me,” Miles told The Associated Press. \u201dI\u2019ll have a lot of fun so I\u2019m just very excited for that.”<\/p>\n
Miles missed the 2023-24 season while recovering from an ACL tear she suffered in the regular-season finale the year before to end her sophmore campaign. She became the first men\u2019s or women\u2019s freshman to post a triple-double in the NCAA Tournament in 2022, and was putting the final touches on a season that had made her an Associated Press second-team All-American when she crashed to the baseline after her right knee buckled on a drive at Louisville in 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just felt like I had a lot more left in me in the tank,\u201d she said. \u201cBeing far, far removed from my injury, mentally, physically, emotionally, was what I was telling myself, so, it was a lot of back and forth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miles said she literally waited until the last minute to decide what she wanted to do, something she’d love to see the WNBA change in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t decide until the very end, as you know, we have 48 hours to make a huge life decision, which is really hard,\u201d Miles said.<\/p>\n
One thing she\u2019s happy about when she does enter the WNBA next season is that there will be a new collective bargaining agreement that should include an increase in player salaries. Right now the rookie salary is about $75,000 for top picks. She\u2019ll make a lot more than that in college this year. The low salaries were one factor in Miles\u2019 decision, but she said it wasn\u2019t a major one.<\/p>\n
Then when she decided to stay in school, Miles made another big choice to enter the transfer portal and leave Notre Dame.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew it was gonna be a big story. I knew it was gonna (upset) a lot of people,” she said. \u201cI knew it was gonna cause a lot of commotion, but I ultimately was selfish one time with my career. I was talking to a bunch of power schools and then ultimately I really just wanted to go somewhere where I\u2019d be able to showcase my abilities the best that I can.”<\/p>\n
Miles didn’t get into specifics on why she decided to leave Notre Dame, but did say it was hard to tell Irish coach Niele Ivey that she was leaving.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was her first recruit so there was always a special kind of connection there, so when you have to have a hard conversation about people you care about, it’s tough, but it had to be done,\u201d Miles said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want her to find out, apart from me, so I had to grow up in that moment we had the conversation and we kept it going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miles said that Ivey reassured her that she’d \u201calways be a part of the family and that she loves me. I\u2019m doing what\u2019s best for me, she\u2019s doing what\u2019s best for her so there\u2019s always respect there from my end.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she liked a lot of what TCU has done the last few years under coach Mark Campbell.<\/p>\n
“I won\u2019t be restricted anywhere, I\u2019ll be able to kind of flow and have fun and really showcase before I get to the league,’ she said.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP WNBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Olivia Miles might have been playing this weekend along with WNBA rookie Paige Bueckers at the league’s All-Star…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-2670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}