NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) \u2014 Athletes Unlimited announced a final roster Thursday featuring 20 returning players and 20 newcomers for its fifth season of women’s basketball starting Feb. 4 in Nashville.<\/p>\n
The roster includes Tina Charles<\/a>, the WNBA’s<\/a> career leader in rebounds and field goals, who played overseas the past decade during the league’s offseason. <\/p>\n WNBA veterans like Ariel Atkins<\/a>, Alysha Clark<\/a>, three-time Olympian Kia Nurse, Odyssey Sims, Aerial Powers<\/a>, Kiah Stokes, Brianna Turner<\/a>, Isabelle Harrison<\/a> and Bria Hartley<\/a> also are on tap for this season.<\/p>\n Lexie Brown<\/a>, chair of the AU Pro Basketball Player executive committee, also will have her father, former Celtics<\/a> star Dee Brown, on hand. His title is player enhancement specialist. He will be working with Danielle Viglione helping coaches Zak Buncik, Edniesha Curry, Chaz Franklin and Kia Vaughn.<\/p>\n Other players competing include Aneesha Morrow, Nalyssa Smith, Jacy Sheldon<\/a>, Te-Hina Paopao<\/a>, Zia Cooke<\/a>, Deja Kelly<\/a>, Kaitlyn Chen<\/a>, Jaylyn Sherrod<\/a> and Aaliyah Nye<\/a>.<\/p>\n Megan Perry, vice president of basketball for Athletes Unlimited, said this roster features players who want to test themselves against the best. AU\u2019s format features 5-on-5 basketball.<\/p>\n \u201cThe depth across all 40 spots is exceptional, and it\u2019s going to make this one of the most challenging and compelling seasons we\u2019ve had,\u201d Perry said.<\/p>\n The 2026 season will be played for a second straight year at Municipal Auditorium in Nashville from Feb. 4 to March 1.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP WNBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) \u2014 Athletes Unlimited announced a final roster Thursday featuring 20 returning players and 20 newcomers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-410464","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410464","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=410464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}