August 23, 2025
Locked On Women’s Basketball: Reviewing 2025 preseason picks
Hunter Cruse, Emily Adler and Lincoln Shafer reevaluate The Next's preseason WNBA picks and predictions
On the latest episode of Locked On Women’s Basketball, hosts Hunter Cruse, Emily Adler and Lincoln Shafer revisit The Next’s WNBA preseason award and predictions to determine their validity at this point in the season.
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They start by breaking down the preseason WNBA Finals predictions, which included eight votes for the New York Liberty, six votes for the Minnesota Lynx and one vote for the Las Vegas Aces.
“Minnesota has been pretty clearly the best team all regular season when they’ve been healthy, just an absolute basketball machine,” Shafer said. “They’re always 30 seconds away from going on a 10-0 run, and they never quit, and they have so many weapons and so many ways to beat you. I think that having Minnesota and New York as the clear top two was what we thought was the obvious pick at the time, and it still looks to be the right selection here.”
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When it came to predicting individual player awards, the Sixth Player of the Year was the “least consensus award.” Cruse, Adler and Shafer talked through the possible options, with Shafer stating his case for Atlanta Dream forward Naz Hillmon.
“I was really intrigued by a lot of the stuff that Naz was doing, and I thought that playing in the Karl Smesko system would be really fun for her, given her screening, the occasional post-up,” Shafer said. “I didn’t see that she’d be a high-volume three-point shooter coming, but that’s been a huge boon to her case.”
The trio rounded out the show, reviewing which teams were picked to have the best and worst offense and defense in the league.
Adler and Cruse revealed they voted that the Golden State Valkyries would have the worst defense in the league, prompting Adler to say, “We were very disrespectful.”
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