Esmeralda Morales of Montana State Bobcats has WNBA hopes

Morales starred the previous three seasons at Portland State, a Big Sky Conference program she led to two wins over MSU. Shortly after the 5-foot-5 guard entered the portal, Binford tried to convince her to become a Bobcat.

“I opened up with a statement, something like, ‘Well, I haven’t figured out how to guard you, so I think it’s better that you just come here,’” Binford said with a smile last week.

Morales was sold, transferring to MSU last April. She continued to be nearly unguardable throughout the 2024-25 regular season, which MSU (27-3, 17-1 Big Sky) ended Monday with an outright conference title-clinching win. The senior from the Seattle area has shown professional potential all winter, both because of her versatile game and her intangible qualities. She’s been the little engine for the Bobcats in a historic season.

“It’s all a blessing,” Morales said last week. “It’s great to be part of this program, part of this team and have the memories.”

Neither of Morales’ parents nor her two sisters have played basketball. Until about first grade, Morales solely played soccer. Around that time, her soccer coach started a basketball team and wanted her to join. Her parents liked the idea of keeping her busy, so her basketball career began.

Morales considered herself better at soccer and liked it basically as much as hoops. After her AAU career began, it became tough for her parents to juggle the basketball and soccer schedules, so they made her focus on one sport. It wasn’t an easy choice, but basketball gave her “a feeling” she didn’t quite get from soccer, she said.

“I just fell in love with it,” she added.

Morales also liked the idea of playing in a gym, rather than outside in rainy Spanaway, Washington. There were women’s basketball players she looked up to, namely Seattle Storm legend Sue Bird, but it was hard to find a Latina in the WNBA. That made Morales, who’s Mexican, more excited about playing hoops.

“I wanted to be different,” she said. “I wanted to show those that look like me that you can do it, that you don’t have to just do one specific sport. Basketball, you can do that too.”

Morales earned a second-team all-state selection, three all-conference honors and scored more than 1,000 points in her career at Bethel High School. She received offers from PSU, San Jose State and UC Santa Barbara. Portland is about a two-hour drive south of Spanaway, so the ability for her parents to attend PSU games played a major role in her decision to become a Viking.

In her first college game, Morales scored a PSU freshman-record 32 points against Warner Pacific — a total that remains her career-high. She started every game that season and led PSU in points (12.5), assists (3.7), steals (1.9) and minutes (35.4) per game. The Vikings lost 24 of 29 games in 2021-22, including two to MSU.

PSU went 15-16 the following season, and Morales earned an All-Big Sky second-team selection. After two forgettable performances in regular season losses to MSU, she scored a game-high 28 points in a Big Sky tournament quarterfinal win over the Cats.

“Obviously Esme was a great player then,” MSU now-graduate student wing Katelynn Martin said Thursday. “That’s why we wanted her on our team.”

Morales received an all-conference first-team selection last season, and the Vikings finished 8-23, with a 60-55 home win over MSU in which Morales scored a game-high 20 points.

Morales, a public health major, earned Academic All-Big Sky in each of her three seasons at PSU. School has always been important to her, thanks in large part to her father, Juan, who’s an aerospace mechanic, and her mother, Rebecca, who’s a drug and alcohol prevention specialist.

“My parents didn’t have the opportunity to go to college,” Morales said. “So for me to have this opportunity and a free education, it’s like, I need to take it serious and be able to get a degree.”

Morales never considered the possibility of playing for MSU when she went up against them the previous three seasons. PSU’s losing records didn’t drive her into the portal either.

“I was comfortable. I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t need to work out. I can just take a break,’” she said. “I was like, ‘This is not me. I need to go somewhere where I’m going to be challenged, somewhere where I’m not comfortable.’”

Morales fielded lots of interest when she entered the portal last year, she said, and narrowed her list down to three Big Sky schools: MSU, Idaho and Northern Arizona. She visited Idaho first and MSU second.

“I didn’t want to rebuild my name,” she said. “Here in the conference, the majority of people know who I am, and I already knew how the other teams are.”

Morales believed the Cats would get her out of her comfort zone and help her regain her love for the game. The “biggest thing” MSU had going for it, she said, were the direct flights from Portland to Bozeman.

“I’m a big family person, so I wanted my parents to come, my sisters to come,” she added. “(MSU) was just easier for them.”

Sometimes, Morales wonders what her life would look like now if she transferred to Idaho or NAU instead.

“(But) there’s a reason why I didn’t go to other schools. God showed me signs. He was like, ‘Hey, this is where you need to go,’ and I’m a believer of signs. I trust his process,” she said. “I talked to my parents, I talked to other people that have been there and supported me, and they were like, ‘This is the right fit,’ and then I felt like, ‘This is the place.’ Luckily, I made the right decision.”

The Cats finished an injury-riddled 2023-24 season with a 17-16 record and a semifinal loss to eventual Big Sky tournament champion Eastern Washington. They played strong defense all winter but often struggled offensively.

A talented freshman class and a host of key returners, including Lexi Deden and Dylan Philip coming back from injuries, gave Binford optimism heading into the offseason, but an elite ball-handler/perimeter scoring piece was still missing. Morales completed the puzzle.

“We were looking for somebody we could put the ball in their hands because we had all the other pieces returning,” Binford said. “We wanted somebody with experience, we wanted somebody we could go to in those (crunch time) situations and we wanted some familiarity with what we were getting. With her name, that was an instant no-brainer.”

Morales averaged 15 points per game and shot 35.1% from 3-point range (42.1% in 2022-23) and 86.2% from the free throw line in 36.2 minutes per game during her three years at PSU. This season, Morales is averaging 15.2 points, 3.6 assists and 2.9 rebounds in 29.8 minutes per game with shooting percentages of 38.7% from the field, 36.4% from 3 and 88.3% from the line in 30 starts.

Many basketball players are either score-first or pass-first players. Morales probably sees scoring first, but “she hits the pass so quickly that she’s got a really nice balance,” Binford said. Morales’ favorite personal highlight of the season was a behind-the-back pass to Taylee Chirrick in a home win over Northern Arizona a month ago.

Morales’ knack for making the right play, whether it’s scoring or passing, can be attributed to her “elite IQ” and the work she puts in during point guard meetings, Binford said. Those traits also helped Morales answer perhaps the biggest question about her transfer: how well could she transition from PSU’s zone defense to MSU’s man-to-man, switch-heavy scheme.

Defense has been Morales’ biggest area of improvement, from her perspective. She’s averaging 1.9 steals per game this season, helping MSU rank first among all Division I women’s teams in steals per game (14.6).

“When you have kids that have great instincts, they can pick up any defense,” Binford said, adding, “We used a lot of Sue Bird discussion of, ‘You might have a switch here, but you’re going to bounce out there. Our bigs will find ways to get you out.’ As soon as we did that in one of our very first drills, she was as good as any veteran who’s been here for four (years).”

Morales quickly became an unquestioned leader on the Cats, according to Binford and several players.

“She is absolutely respected by every single person on this team because they know she’s put in the time and she cares about every single one of them,” Binford said. “She’s not that kid that’s wanting the attention or wanting the praise, wanting the numbers. She just wants this team to win, and she wants her teammates to be celebrated.”

Every player looks to Morales during tough stretches or when they need a clutch shot, Martin said. At Montana on Jan. 25, Morales got to the free throw line with four seconds left and made her second foul shot to give MSU a 67-66 lead. That was the final score in her first Brawl of the Wild, which she finished with 17 points, six assists and six rebounds. That free throw was the first of 38 straight she made, a program record.

Last month in Bozeman, Morales tallied 28 points, five assists and five boards in a blowout win over the Lady Griz.

“She brings calmness, which is so vital to this program,” Deden said in January. “She brings everyone together, and everyone trusts her.”

Morales’ first game against PSU this season came Feb. 1 in Portland. Memories flooded back when she saw her old apartment and the Chipotle she frequented.

“A lot of emotions,” she said. “But then when I got comfortable, when I was able to play me, it was just like, ‘OK, let’s go win another game. How can we grow?’”

Morales has a chance to play her former team one more time this weekend at the Big Sky tournament in Boise, Idaho. Tenth-seeded PSU will face No. 9 Northern Colorado in a first-round game Saturday, and the winner will take on top-seeded MSU at noon Sunday.

The Cats clinched at least a share of the Big Sky regular season title and set records for consecutive wins and most wins in a season with a lopsided victory over PSU last week. Morales hoisted the championship trophy and cut off a piece of the net after the game.

“It just gave me more drive to go win in the tournament,” she said Thursday. “Cut the nets, see the confetti fall and then hold the tournament trophy.”

A pro career is a secondary concern for Morales right now. But whenever this season ends, she’ll turn her attention to, “How can I get those opportunities to get to the WNBA?” she said.

Morales’ size and parts of her game that need fine tuning might force her to play outside of the United States initially. But Binford, who played in the WNBA from 1998-2002, believes her star guard can reach that league too.

“I want to challenge any GM in the WNBA, get this kid into your camp and see what happens,” Binford said, adding, “There are things about her game that you just can’t appreciate until you get her into a camp. You ask her to do one thing, and she does it immediately. You ask her to learn something, and she’s got it.

“There are different kinds of great talents, and I feel like she’s got all the components you want at that level.”