Defending champs cut a forward and add a guard
The Seattle Storm made a pair of roster moves on Wednesday by signing free agent guard Blake Dietrick and waiving rookie forward Anriel Howard. The defending WNBA champions have gotten out to a 3-2 start, but are trying to improve a roster missing stars Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart.
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Dietrick was the 2015 Ivy League Player of the Year, leading the conference in assists with 4.9 per game and setting Princeton’s single-season assists record with 157. However, she went undrafted out of college.
She caught on with Cestistica Orvieto in Italy for the 2015-16 season. She went on to play for Bendigo Spirit in Australia and Greece’s AO Dafni Agioy Dimitriou the next two seasons.
Dietrick is making her second stop in Seattle after joining the Storm in training camp in 2016. She broke camp with the team and made two appearances for them in the regular season. She also has a history with coach Dan Hughes, who coached the San Antonio Stars in 2016 when Dietrick appeared in one game for them on a seven-day contract.
Howard was selected by the Storm at the end of the second round in April’s draft. After debuting against the Minnesota Lynx on May 29, she went on to appear in two more games. In her three appearances, she notched five points and three rebounds over a total of 23 minutes.
She came to the Pacific Northwest after a successful career at Texas A&M and Mississippi State. She spent her first three years in College Station, where she made the SEC All-Freshman team in 2016. She set the career rebounding record for the Aggies by grabbing 1,002 boards while averaging 9.8 rebounds per game over her career for another Texas A&M record. She also set the career double-double record in College Station, putting up 32 double-doubles in just three seasons.
After transferring to Mississippi State as a graduate student for the 2018-19 season, Howard averaged 16.4 points and 8.4 rebounds per game. The Bulldogs went 33-3 and ended their run in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
The Storm has 12 players on their roster after the corresponding moves.
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