{"id":439290,"date":"2026-09-17T22:46:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T22:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/439290\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T22:46:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T22:46:15","slug":"azzi-fudd-responds-to-olivia-miles-comparisons-after-wnba-rookie-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/439290\/","title":{"rendered":"Azzi Fudd responds to Olivia Miles comparisons after WNBA rookie year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former UConn women’s basketball<\/a> star Azzi Fudd<\/a>\u00a0spoke with reporters Tuesday afternoon for the first time since undergoing season-ending arthroscopic knee surgery in late August.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fudd was selected No. 1 overall in this year’s WNBA Draft and arrived in Dallas with lofty expectations \u2014 benchmarks that she largely met during a stellar and, at times, historic debut season. Still, Fudd’s Rookie of the Year candidacy likely ended well before mid-August, as No. 2 pick Olivia Miles emerged as a do-it-all point guard for the WNBA-leading Minnesota Lynx this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As such, Fudd and Miles have drawn comparisons, with some fans questioning whether the former Notre Dame and TCU guard was more deserving of the top overall pick. Fudd opted not to engage in those comparisons when asked during Tuesday\u2019s media session, instead congratulating Miles on a standout rookie season.<\/p>\n

“Liv has had a fantastic season, and she’s playing phenomenally, but I don’t get caught up in comparing myself,” Fudd said. “I think that comparison is the thief of joy. It’s like the social media thing \u2014 when you start to look outside yourself, there are so many distractions that take away from the work that you could be doing. I think she’s a great player, she’s having a great season, and I had a great season.”<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll leave that to you guys to debate and discuss,” Fudd added about the comparisons to Miles.<\/p>\n

Fudd emerged as the likely No. 1 overall pick early in the 2025-26 college basketball season, with 19-year-old Spanish center\u00a0Awa Fam providing her primary competition for the top spot at the time. Miles was a relatively late riser on WNBA Draft boards and was selected by Cheryl Reeve and Minnesota, which needed to replace the high-usage production of UConn\u2019s Napheesa Collier, who missed the first half of the season while recovering from surgeries on both ankles.<\/p>\n

Dallas already had another Geno Auriemma<\/a> disciple in Paige Bueckers<\/a>, the franchise\u2019s point guard of the future, as well as high-volume scorer\u00a0Arike Ogunbowale. That allowed the Wings to value Fudd\u2019s reputation as an efficient shooter and pesky perimeter defender with the No. 1 pick. Fudd required a longer on-ramp, scoring just 11 total points in her first two WNBA games, but she shot 40 percent from 3-point range and became the fastest guard in WNBA history to record at least 25 steals and 15 blocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former UConn women’s basketball star Azzi Fudd\u00a0spoke with reporters Tuesday afternoon for the first time since undergoing season-ending…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[86570,150,152,151,86569],"class_list":["post-439290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-all-daily-sites","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news","tag-ct-insider"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}