It’s 2026 and women’s basketball is at a critical moment in the sport’s history. The WNBA and the league’s players union are steeped in a tense labor negotiation, Unrivaled is looking to build on its debut campaign while a new entity, Project B, could impact the winter landscape. Interest in college basketball continues to surge, but there isn’t a clear-cut face of the sport as the NCAA Tournament nears.
Before too much happens, The Athletic’s Ben Pickman and Sabreena Merchant are here to weigh in on what they think will happen in the coming 12 months. Here are our predictions for the WNBA, college basketball, and women’s basketball business.
Advertisement
WNBA
Merchant: An expansion team will make the playoffs
The Golden State Valkyries set a new standard for expansion teams in 2025, becoming the first team to make the playoffs in their debut season. Their example means early success will no longer be an anomaly in the WNBA. All but two veterans will enter free agency, providing the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire ample opportunities to fill their rosters with established talent. The Tempo hired a championship head coach in Sandy Brondello, who expects to compete and hasn’t missed the postseason as a head coach. The Fire brought in the assistant general manager of those Valkyries (Vanja Černivec), providing Portland with an even clearer understanding of how to succeed immediately. A chaotic offseason of player movement could limit the league’s overall continuity, making it easier for new teams to come out of the gate hot. Whether it behooves these teams to win right away rather than positioning themselves for the 2027 draft (when JuJu Watkins and Madison Booker can enter the WNBA) is an open question, but either Toronto or Portland will be good enough to finish in the top eight in 2027.
Pickman: A first-time league MVP (Bueckers?) will be crowned
The WNBA MVP award essentially has been earmarked to particular players for more than half a decade. Since 2018, Breanna Stewart or A’ja Wilson has taken home the honor six of the eight seasons, with Jonquel Jones (2021) and Elena Delle Donne (2019) as the outliers. But the league has too much talent to just write in either Stewart or Wilson for the trophy yet again. I predict someone else will win the award for the first time.
Advertisement
Napheesa Collier has finished second in MVP voting the past two seasons, and her candidacy was seemingly derailed by an August ankle injury. She would have been the likeliest first-timer, but her injuries might impact her early-season production. Nevertheless, Alyssa Thomas has been a top-five finisher for four consecutive years and is poised to build on her first season in Phoenix, which resulted in the Mercury’s WNBA Finals appearance. It also seems like a matter of when, not if, Caitlin Clark and Paige Bueckers will take home league MVP awards and snap a decade-plus-long streak without a guard winning MVP. For now, I’ll take Bueckers.
College basketball
Pickman: UConn won’t repeat
UConn has dominated almost all of its opponents throughout the first two months of the season. The Huskies are undefeated and have won 11 games by more than 30 points. Their offense and defense are ranked in the top 10 nationally with Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong playing at All-America levels. And yet, I’m taking the field over UConn for winning the 2026 national championship.
Advertisement
For starters, history is on my side. Not since 2016 has a team repeated as champion (though that was UConn), and only once — South Carolina last year — has a title-winner even advanced to the following year’s championship. Texas has an uber-impressive non-conference resume, defeating two top-five opponents (South Carolina and UCLA) and three other top-15 teams (Baylor, North Carolina and Ole Miss), and is second in net rating. UCLA has a roster loaded with senior talent looking to avenge its shortcomings in last season’s Final Four. Michigan, South Carolina, LSU and Iowa State also look like formidable contenders with star power. I picked UCLA to win the national championship at the start of the season, and haven’t seen enough to waver from that.
Merchant: UConn will go undefeated
Of the 10 times a women’s college basketball team has completed an undefeated season, UConn has accounted for six. Geno Auriemma knows how to pace a team. The schedule is also in the Huskies’ favor. The Big East is in a down season, and UConn’s two toughest remaining opponents — Tennessee and Notre Dame — come to Storrs, Conn., this season. Unlike last season when the Huskies built toward the tournament with Azzi Fudd returning from injury and Sarah Strong learning the ropes as a freshman, this season’s squad came out on fire and is deep enough to withstand the rigors of an undefeated campaign. The Huskies’ defensive rating of 70.9 points allowed per 100 possessions is the program’s best since 2016 (an undefeated season). The offensive rating of 120.6 is UConn’s best since 2018, when it finished the regular season undefeated before losing in the Final Four on a buzzer-beater.
No team boasts a duo as talented as Strong and Fudd, both of whom have already won a title. The Huskies’ depth is preposterous, to the point that Jana El-Alfy started last season and shut down first-team All-American Lauren Betts in the national semifinals but now averages 11.4 minutes per game. With the emergence of Blanca Quiñonez, who closed out December with five straight double-digit scoring outings, UConn has all of the pieces necessary to repeat as champions.
Sports business
Merchant: Project B will not play a game
Project B is supposed to tip off in November with a series of two-week tournaments around the world. A handful of players have signed on, including multi-time WNBA All-Stars Nneka Ogwumike, Jonquel Jones, Jewell Loyd, Alyssa Thomas and Kelsey Mitchell. What it doesn’t have is a traditional model of a basketball league, enough players to currently fill out 11 teams, or a hook for how or why fans should tune into a barnstorming enterprise that won’t have a consistent schedule. A secrecy surrounds the operations and funding of Project B, and some of the basketball world is skeptical about how it will all work. Unrivaled proved that a basketball start-up can take off with a new format, but there are far more questions about Project B.
Advertisement
Given that this prediction is for the year 2026, this doesn’t mean that Project B will never come to fruition. However, if it does, the first game will be delayed until at least 2027. The labor uncertainty of the WNBA is a factor; if the league’s season bleeds into November because of a later start date (and because of the FIBA World Cup in September), that would complicate the availability of Project B’s biggest names.
Pickman: WNBA and union will reach deal
Most years, predicting that the WNBA season will start in May would have the spice of plain white rice, but this offseason has been unpredictable. The WNBA and the WNBPA are knotted in tense negotiations to reach a new collective bargaining agreement. The players’ union voted last month to allow its leadership the option to strike, and both sides have tried to maintain pressure on the other with the existence of a 48-hour extension termination clause. So it’s not a certainty that the WNBA season will begin as planned in mid-May. However, it’s hard to believe either side wants to miss games, considering the explosive growth the league has experienced. Stymying this unprecedented momentum would be a mistake, which both sides ultimately will recognize. Compromise over the salary structure won’t come easily, but there is still time to reach a new deal without impacting the official start date of the regular season. The expansion draft, a historic free agency and college draft might all have to occur within a few weeks of each other — putting a strain on each of the league’s 15 teams — but come May, at least games will tip off on time.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Advertisement
Minnesota Lynx, New York Liberty, Seattle Storm, Los Angeles Sparks, Washington Mystics, Atlanta Dream, Chicago Sky, Connecticut Sun, Indiana Fever, Dallas Wings, Las Vegas Aces, Phoenix Mercury, Connecticut Huskies, Golden State Valkyries, Portland Fire, Toronto Tempo, WNBA, Sports Business, Women’s College Basketball
2026 The Athletic Media Company
