The NCAA Championship game will take place in mere hours, and either South Carolina or UCLA will be crowned this year's winners. But the big game will have little impact on another huge event coming up soon: the 2026 WNBA Draft.
The process for deciding who a team will draft begins months before that draft actually happens. While it's easy for fans to assume that decisions are made up until the night of the draft — and, sometimes, they actually are — many teams have a solid idea of who they want to bring into the fold, and they know at what position they may get that opportunity.
The Dallas Wings have been pretty open about already having a candidate in mind for the No. 1 overall pick. Both the team's GM Curt Miller and new coach Jose Fernandez have scouted Azzi Fudd several times this season, and there are a lot of reasons to believe she'll be joining Dallas very soon.
She'll be an excellent complement to Paige Bueckers
Fudd spent for years playing with Paige Bueckers at UConn, which means the two already know one another well. As a player, she's a great complement to the skills Bueckers brings to the floor. The Wings, who drafted Bueckers as the No. 1 overall pick in 2025, have already indicated the team hopes to build around her for years to come — which means drafting players who can work with her and allow Bueckers the room to showcase her own elite skill set is of paramount importance.
One of the biggest issues the Wings ran into during the 2025 season was that Bueckers was not fully able to run the point guard position because she was also the strongest scorer on the team. The team's offense ended up clunky and scattered more often than not, and teams learned they could simply double or triple team Bueckers and block her shot. As a result, the Wings were at the bottom of the WNBA.
Adding Fudd to the team will open up opportunities for Bueckers to run the floor the way she's meant to, which, in turn, will likely elevate the Wings' game.
Fudd is also the best shooter in this year's draft class, a skill the Wings would be lucky to be able to capitalize on. If Bueckers can rely on Fudd to get her shot, she can focus on getting her own. The Wings could end up a much more potent force than people expect, and drafting Fudd to the team would almost certainly put them on the right track.