Her 105th career start came at Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles, where WSU held a 16-point lead over then-No. 2 UCLA in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
On a routine layup, Leger-Walker suffered a knee injury. The Cougars won the game, 85-82, but sputtered out of the NCAA Tournament picture the rest of the season.<\/p>\n
Leger-Walker averaged 13.2 points per game for 21 games her senior year and totaled 137 rebounds, 107 assists and 36 steals.<\/p>\n
She earned three All-American awards while at WSU and was an Anne Meyers Drysdale Award finalist. In 2020-21, Leger-Walker was the Pac-12 Freshman of the Year. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal was always to finish four years here and really try and help turn this program around,\u201d Leger-Walker told WSU\u2019s student paper, the Daily Evergreen, in a 2024 article.<\/p>\n
Leger-Walker chose to transfer to UCLA, the school where her Cougar career ended. She recovered from her injury and sat out the 2024-25 season.<\/p>\n
This season, she returned and took a backseat scoring-wise with five WNBA draft picks in front of her, however, she made herself valuable in other ways, dishing out a team-best 213 assists.<\/p>\n
She averaged 8.4 points, 5.6 assists and four rebounds per game for UCLA. <\/p>\n
\u201cCharlisse is one of the highest-IQ players I\u2019ve ever been around,\u201d said WSU coach Kamie Ethridge, who recruited and mentored Charlisse Leger-Walker and her sister, Krystal Leger-Walker. \u201cShe knows her strengths, and she knows those around her strengths. And I just think she\u2019s playing at an unbelievably high level and making other people better on the floor, which is one of her God-given skills that she has.\u201d<\/p>\n
UCLA coach Cori Close predicted that Leger-Walker would be the steal of the draft.<\/p>\n
Now, the former Bruin and Coug will have the chance to prove her coaches right. <\/p>\n
Taylor can be reached at 208-848-2260, staylor@lmtribune.com, or on X or Instagram @Sam_C_Taylor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Her 105th career start came at Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles, where WSU held a 16-point lead over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,255532,434,255531],"class_list":{"0":"post-583366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-washington-state-womens-basketball","10":"tag-wnba","11":"tag-wsu-womens-basketball"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583366","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=583366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}