{"id":200437,"date":"2025-10-03T23:25:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T23:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/200437\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T23:25:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T23:25:07","slug":"season-wrap-up-as-finals-begin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/200437\/","title":{"rendered":"Season wrap-up as Finals begin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best-of-seven WNBA Finals series begins on Friday as former South Carolina<\/a> star A’ja Wilson and her Las Vegas Aces team will take on the Phoenix Mercury. The Aces have home court advantage behind Wilson, who was the league’s Player of the Year and also the Defensive Player of the Year.<\/p>\n

There are a dozen former Gamecocks who played in the WNBA this season. Eight of those players ended up making the playoffs but Wilson is now the lone representative for head coach Dawn Staley<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The opening game of the series tips off at 8 p.m. on ESPN tonight, Friday, October 3. Game 2 of the series is on Sunday at 3 p.m. before the series shifts south to Phoenix for Game 3 on Wednesday, October 8 at 8 p.m.<\/p>\n

With the WNBA season winding down, here’s a look at how the former Gamecocks performed over the course of the season and into the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Forward Laeticia Amihere (Golden State Valkyries) – WNBA profile page<\/a>: Amihere played in 29 regular season games averaging 5.4 points, 4.3 rebounds and 0.9 assists over 13.2 minutes per game. She also played in one playoff game, but only for four minutes where she grabbed one rebound.<\/p>\n

Center Aliyah Boston (Indiana Fever) – WNBA profile page<\/a>: Boston and her Fever team took Wilson and the Aces to a winner-take-all Game 5 in the WNBA semifinals. In the Game 5 loss, Boston had 11 points and 16 rebounds over 32 minutes to help keep her team in the game, but they lost in overtime. For the year, Boston averaged 15.0 points and 8.2 rebounds with 3.7 assists and 1.2 steals over 30.2 minutes per game in the regular season. In eight postseason games, she averaged 12.5 points and 11.4 rebounds with 4.1 assists. Boston was an all-star again this season for the third time in her three-year career.<\/p>\n

Center Kamilla Cardoso (Chicago Sky) – WNBA profile page<\/a>: Cardoso and the Sky didn’t make the postseason but she had a very productive season. Cardoso averaged 13.6 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists in 27.6 minutes per game this season. Her final game was one of her best from a scoring standpoint, putting up 21 points. She had double-double performances the two games prior.<\/p>\n

Guard Zia Cooke (Seattle Storm) – WNBA profile page<\/a>: Cooke and her Storm teammates lost to the Aces in the first round of the playoffs. Cookie had an off-the-bench role this year averaging 3.5 points along with 0.5 rebounds and 0.5 assists in 10.0 minutes of action per game. She played in one postseason game where she scored three points and had one assist in seven minutes. She played in 27 total games on the season.<\/p>\n

Forward Sania Feagin (Los Angeles Sparks) – WNBA profile page<\/a>: Feagin played in 16 games this season in a backup role for the Sparks. She averaged 1.3 points and 0.7 rebounds in 4.8 minutes per game. In her final game of the year, which was the last game of the regular season since the Sparks didn’t make the playoffs, Feagin played 10 minutes and scored four points with two assists.<\/p>\n

Guard Allisha Gray (Atlanta Dream) – WNBA profile page<\/a>: Gray had a brilliant season in what was her ninth year in the league. In 42 games played, she averaged 18.4 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.1 steals over 34.5 minutes per game. The Dream lost to Boston and the Fever in the first round of the playoffs, but Gray averaged 16.0 points and 8.3 rebounds in those three playoff games. Gray was a WNBA All-Star this year and was on the AP All-WNBA team for the first time in her career.<\/p>\n

Guard Bree Hall (Indiana Fever) WNBA profile page<\/a>: – Hall played in eight games on the season, three for Golden State<\/a> and the final five, to include four playoff games, with the Fever. She played sparingly in all eight games, never seeing more than five minutes of action in her rookie season. In the regular season, she averaged 0.8 points and 0.8 rebounds over 4.3 minutes. She averaged 2.0 minutes in four games in the playoffs averaging 1.5 points and 0.8 rebounds per game.<\/p>\n

Guard Tyasha Harris (Dallas Wings) – WNBA profile page<\/a>: Harris, now in the league for five seasons, averaged 4.6 points, 1.0 rebounds and 2.6 assists per game this year. She suffered a knee injury on May 27 and will miss the remainder of this season, though. She was hitting on 45.5 percent of her three-point field goals this year before the injury.<\/p>\n

Guard Tiffany Mitchell (Seattle Storm) – WNBA profile page<\/a>: In what was her 10th year in the WNBA, Mitchell had a more limited role this season. She played in 39 games and averaged 3.2 points and 1.1 rebounds with 0.4 steals in 13.1 minutes per game. Mitchell played in one of the team’s playoff games against the Aces and scored six points with two assists and a rebound in 12 minutes.<\/p>\n

Guard Te-Hina Paopao (Atlanta Dream) – WNBA profile page<\/a>: Paopao had a great rookie season with the Dream averaging 16.7 minutes in her 43 regular season games played. She averaged 5.8 points, 1.6 rebounds and 2.4 assists in the regular season, then played three playoff games where she averaged 6.3 points and 1.7 rebounds over 9.7 minutes.<\/p>\n

Guard Saniya Rivers (Connecticut Sun) – WNBA profile page<\/a>: Rivers had a nice rookie season from an individual standpoint, even though the Sun missed the playoffs with an 11-33 record. Rivers played in 42 of the team’s 44 games averaging 26.1 minutes. She scored 8.8 points, grabbed 2.8 rebounds, dished out 2.7 assists, grabbed 1.5 steals and also averaged 0.9 blocks per game as a rookie. She scored in double figures in four of her final five games.<\/p>\n

Forward A’ja Wilson (Las Vegas Aces) – WNBA profile page<\/a>: Wilson has more games left to play but in the regular season, she averaged 23.4 points and 10.2 rebounds with 3.1 assists, 2.3 blocks and 1.6 steals over 31.2 minutes per game. As one would expect, she’s improved on most of those numbers in the postseason going for 26.0 points, 9.1 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 2.8 blocks and 2.6 steals over 35.9 minutes per game through eight games. This year, she was an all-star for the seventh time, the league’s MVP for the fourth time and the DPOTY for the third time. She was also the scoring champion and blocks leader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The best-of-seven WNBA Finals series begins on Friday as former South Carolina star A’ja Wilson and her Las…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-200437","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\/200437","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=200437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}