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
“I 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’ll favor me and I’ll have great teammates and a great coach around me,” Miles told The Associated Press. “I’ll have a lot of fun so I’m 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’s or women’s 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
“I just felt like I had a lot more left in me in the tank,” she said. “Being far, far removed from my injury, mentally, physically, emotionally, was what I was telling myself, so, it was a lot of back and forth.”<\/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
“I didn’t decide until the very end, as you know, we have 48 hours to make a huge life decision, which is really hard,” Miles said.<\/p>\n
One thing she’s 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’ll make a lot more than that in college this year. The low salaries were one factor in Miles’ decision, but she said it wasn’t 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
“I knew it was gonna be a big story. I knew it was gonna (upset) a lot of people,” she said. “I 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’d 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
“I 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,” Miles said. “I didn’t 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.”<\/p>\n
Miles said that Ivey reassured her that she’d “always be a part of the family and that she loves me. I’m doing what’s best for me, she’s doing what’s best for her so there’s always respect there from my end.”<\/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’t be restricted anywhere, I’ll be able to kind of flow and have fun and really showcase before I get to the league,’ she said.<\/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":18475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-18474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}