Signed by Atlanta Dream, Taylor Mikesell gets another crack at WNBA
COLUMBUS — Ohio State standout guard Taylor Mikesell is getting another chance in the WNBA. Mikesell was signed by the Atlanta Dream Monday, close to three weeks after she was waived by the Indiana Fever.
The Fever took Mikesell 13th overall with the first pick of the second round in this year’s WNBA Draft. But she didn’t end up making Indiana’s 12-player roster.
The abrupt transition from draft day jubilation to the anguish that comes with being cut is an all too familiar feeling in the WNBA right now. In fact, back in May, two-time WNBA Champion and one-time WNBA MVP Brianna Stewart spoke out about the league’s roster bind.
“I think it really resonated this year because this is Year Three with the new CBA,” Stewart told ESPN. “Now as those contracts are being negotiated, being renegotiated, everybody’s getting a little more expensive, I guess I would say. That creates fewer roster spots and fewer spots in the league in general.”
More and more teams are sacrificing roster size for higher-end — and, in turn, increasingly pricey — talent, and it’s limiting opportunities at the next level, leading some players such as Los Angeles Sparks forward Chiney Ogwumike to push for a developmental WNBA league.
“In no circumstance should we have a league where top draft picks aren’t on a roster,” Ogwumike said last month, via ESPN.
Mikesell was one of those picks without a home in late May after becoming the 17th player in Ohio State history, and the first five in five years, to be selected in the WNBA Draft. Now, however, Mikesell is getting a second chance to stick in the league, this time with the Atlanta Dream.
Mikesell spent the final two seasons of her well-traveled and illustrious college career at Ohio State. But she started at Maryland, where she became the 2019 Big Ten Freshman of the Year. Her first season with the Terrapins, she set the single-season school record (men’s and women’s) with a whopping 95 3-pointers. In the process, she earned All-Big Ten first-team honors. As a sophomore, Mikesell was part of a Maryland squad that won the Big Ten Tournament.
Then she transferred to Oregon, and, although her numbers were down out West in 2020-21, she contributed to a Ducks team that made the Sweet Sixteen for the fourth time in program history.
She resumed her high-scoring ways at Ohio State, where she piled up more than 1,000 points in just two seasons. Mikesell left Columbus as the program’s leader in free throw percentage (87.8%), and she ranks second in 3-point percentage (44.2%), fourth in 3-point field goals (230) and 25th in points (1,215).
Each of the last two seasons, she was top three in Division I in 3-pointers made. Mikesell averaged 18.6 points per game in 2021-22 and 17.2 points per game in 2022-23. She knocked down four or more 3-pointers in two of Ohio State’s four NCAA Tournament games this past season, including seven against Virginia Tech in the Buckeyes’ first Elite Eight appearance since 1993.
Mikesell is now one of three rookies on the Dream roster, joining forward Laeticia Amihere (South Carolina) and wing Haley Jones (Stanford), both of whom were picked in the first round.
