Can Notre Dame’s Olivia Miles go from injury to the WNBA’s No 1 draft pick? | College basketball

There aren’t a lot of people who can tell you what it feels like to enter college knowing professional teams already see you as a potential No 1 draft pick four years down the road. There are even fewer who can share how they prepared to hit a college court as an early enrollee, starting on a team with players three to four years older than them.

There are fewer still who had all that under their belts and then suffered a season-ending (and potentially career-ending) injury a year later – and who bounced back in such a tremendous way.

Notre Dame point guard Olivia Miles is pretty special. Despite the fact that she may overtake Paige Bueckers as this year’s No 1 pick in the WNBA draft, the 22-year-old is still low-key. She’s not a household name and it’s not apparent she wants to be, but if you follow women’s college basketball, she’s inescapable.

Everything was going Miles’ way until she suffered a major knee injury in February 2023. She had committed to Notre Dame as the No 8-ranked player in the 2021 recruiting class, and even enrolled early, beginning her first basketball season soon after her 18th birthday. As the team’s starting point guard, she averaged 13.7 points, 5.7 rebounds and 7.2 assists; and became the second freshman in the school’s history to post a double-double.

Her sophomore season started out powerfully. Before her injury, she averaged 14.3 points, 7.3 rebounds and 6.9 assists per game; after it, she was named the All-ACC first team. Suddenly she was sidelined for the foreseeable future with a torn ACL, forced to endure painful surgeries as Hannah Hidalgo stepped into her spot and began to dominate.

Miles wasn’t back on the court until November 2024, but instead of ceding control to Hidalgo, the pair put the team first and have since built one of the most dominant backcourts in college hoops today. Miles is known for her elite passing – she’s drawn comparisons to Portugal’s Ticha Penicherio, who played in the WNBA for the Sacramento Monarchs – and she’s at her most fluid as a basketball player when she has the room to think ahead and map out several scenarios, the Doctor Strange of women’s basketball.

But to understand Miles’ game, it’s helpful to go back to her freshman year at Blair Academy in New Jersey. Her coach, Quint Clarke, says he knew Miles was special when he first saw her play as an eighth grader, but “after four or five practices, it was clear she was something unique”.

Clarke adds: “I had never seen a player with her style, flair, or creativity. Everyone who walked into our gym would be drawn to her game, and she quickly became a fan favorite.”

He also offers insight into how Miles plays the way she does now for Notre Dame: with plenty of intention. “All that crazy stuff she does in games, she practices that,” Clark explains. “She imagines it and has options mapped out in her head … Good players react to the game; great players anticipate the game, but Olivia was the only player I’ve ever coached who would manipulate the game. Her ability to read the game was almost supernatural, and she frequently made plays in practice that had the rest of us laughing in amazement.”

The style of play is akin to that of Luka Dončić says international basketball trainer Tremaine Dalton. “She manipulates the game in her own way; she can change pace, she can pass, she can score. Olivia can see the floor in a way that’s different. Other players that are trying to anticipate what she wants to do, but she’s already ahead of them.”

At this point in the collegiate season, there are three things most athletes in Miles’ position are focusing on: the next game they’ll play, how the season is going as a whole, and the looming NCAA Tournament. To be preoccupied with the WNBA draft and her rank would be foolish and a distraction, but to pretend that it’s not right there in front of her face would be dishonest.

It’s a scenario that other top draft picks have had to contend with. Alexis Hornbuckle, who was drafted out of Tennessee by the Detroit Shock in 2008 as the fourth overall pick, remembers the feeling. Hornbuckle was drafted along with her teammate, Candace Parker, who went first overall.

“For us, especially for Candace and I, we were still focused on one thing: a national championship,” she says of the months leading up to the draft. “Yes, we were excited, but we had unfinished business. So being able to stay focused on the task at hand was our main focus, and that’s likely true for Olivia and the other young ladies being drafted this year.”

Then-Tennessee coach Pat Summit was also instrumental in keeping her focused. “You don’t believe the hype until you finish what you said you’d do,” Hornbuckle adds. Miles, she says, “seems to be very focused on what she wants and is willing to work hard to ge tit, and I think she understands the talent and gifts that God blessed her with.”

Angel McCoughtry, who was drafted as the first overall pick in the 2009 draft by the Atlanta Dream, says there’s a lot happening before and during the draft. First and foremost, at this point, Miles is likely focused on the regular season, but the draft is dancing in the periphery. Hearing your name called at the draft is rewarding, she says, because “it shows all your hard work, sweat, and tears pays off.”

Off the court, Miles is the exact person she seems to be, Clarke says. “The joy she gets from her teammate’s success – that is genuine,” he says. “The happiest I ever saw her in a game was when our manager got in once and hit a three.” It’s that spirit, that empathy, combined with her prodigious skill that makes Miles such an intense threat on the court and a fascinating prospect for the WNBA.

Whether or not Miles snatches Bueckers’ presumed spot at the top of the draft remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain: basketball fans had better get used to hearing her name.