The Big Ten announced its preseason women’s basketball all-conference teams, as well as projected top-five teams, as selected by a media panel and its coaches Thursday morning.
The Oregon women’s basketball team, which completely overhauled its roster through the transfer portal after a miserable 11-21 campaign a year ago, did not have a single player listed on either All-Big Ten team and did not crack either preseason team poll, as well.
USC’s JuJu Watkins was named the preseason Player of the Year by both members of the media and the league’s coaches, and the Trojans were picked to win the conference by both parties.
USC and UCLA, picked to finish first and second, respectively, each had two players on the all-conference teams in Watkins and Stanford transfer Kiki Iriafen from USC and Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice from UCLA.
Both preseason media and coaches polls had the same listed order of top-five teams: USC, UCLA, Ohio State, Maryland and Indiana. The Big Ten only listed the top five teams that media members and coaches ranked.
The coaches preseason All-Big Ten featured: Makira Cook (Illinois), Hannah Stuelke (Iowa), Lucy Olsen (Iowa), Shyanne Sellers (Maryland), Alexis Markowski (Nebraska), Cotie McMahon (Ohio State), Lauren Betts (UCLA), Kiki Rice (UCLA), JuJu Watkins (USC), Kiki Iriafen (USC) and Serah Williams (Wisconsin).
The media preseason All-Big Ten team included the same group except for Illinois’ Cook.
Oregon’s transfer guard from North Carolina, Deja Kelly, is a notable omission. The fifth-year player is a three-time All-ACC performer and has career averages of 15.4 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 3 assists per game across four seasons in Chapel Hill.
Alec Dietz covers University of Oregon football, volleyball, women’s basketball and baseball for The Register-Guard. You may reach him at adietz@registerguard.com and you can follow him on X@AlecDietz.
