Prospect Watch: checking in on the Dallas Wings’ young talent (2024)

The Dallas Wings are not having a good season. Most of their year has been defined by disappointment and futility. Injuries hit them hard and the roster makeup was flawed from the jump. These days, many Wings fans are hoping for a lottery miracle to land them Paige Buckers. Besides that, there isn’t much from the 2024 season left to cling to.

Part of Dallas’s problem has been an over-reliance on young, unproven players. The Wings infamously came into the season with five rookies, nearly half the active roster. Predictably, many of those players have struggled to make an impact.

But for the rest of 2024, the Wings would be wise to turn their attention toward those young players and start figuring out who’s worth building around. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the Wings’ prospects and evaluate their seasons. We’ll focus on what they’ve done well, where they can improve, and what their future with the team could look like.

Jacy Sheldon

Strengths: Sheldon has been one of the best spot-up three-point shooters in the WNBA this season. She’s shooting over 40% from three in catch-and-shoot situations, an elite number. The spacing she’s provided since becoming a starter has been invaluable.

She’s also shown an ability to knock down pull-up middies.

Sheldon has done a great job on defense as an agent of chaos. She’s great at bothering ball handlers and her motor is second to none. There’s work to do here, but Sheldon could be a very special defender.

Though miscast as a point guard to start the season, Sheldon has offered some nice tertiary playmaking after settling into an off-ball role. When playing alongside other ball handlers, Sheldon does a good job attacking the gaps, keeping the ball moving, and setting up teammates.

Weaknesses: Sheldon’s best asset in college was her rim pressure and finishing ability. She used her otherworldly speed to routinely beat defenders off the dribble and her excellent touch allowed her to finish at a high rate. Thus far in her professional career, we have seen almost none of that.

To me, the problem here is twofold. The first issue is confidence. Sheldon rarely attempts to drive the basketball. The adjustment to the WNBA level is difficult for guards, and she hasn’t quite figured it out yet. The second issue is her frame. Sheldon isn’t small at 5’10”, but she is slender. Her attempted drives are usually thwarted by contact and physicality.

Maddy Siegrist

Strengths: Before breaking her finger and missing extended time, Siegrist was in the midst of a breakout sophom*ore campaign. The main driver of her success was ultra-efficient scoring inside the arc. Siegrist is 29th in the WNBA in True Shooting at 57.2% despite shooting just 29% from three. Siegrist is shooting 57% from two-point range, seventh in the WNBA among players with at least 400 minutes played. She’s doing it in a variety of ways, but her mid-range/floater game has been lethal.

Siegrist has also been a good offensive rebounder (OR rate of 7%, a good mark for a wing). She plays extremely hard and has a nose for the ball.

Defensively, she’s done well as a post defender, using her strength, size, and basketball IQ to hold her own against interior scorers.

Weaknesses: Siegrist needs to take and make more threes. In college, she was a wildly effective three-level scorer. There’s still time for her to grow into that as a pro, but she needs to up the three-point volume. Though the shot looks wonky, she has good touch and hit plenty of threes at Villanova.

Siegrist passed this ball and it led to a turnover. She can’t pass these looks up:

Prospect Watch: checking in on the Dallas Wings’ young talent (1)

As a playmaker, Siegrist is basically a non-entity. She’s averaging just one assist to 0.8 turnovers. She doesn’t have a drive-and-kick game, she’s not running any pick and rolls, and she’s not facilitating from the post. I’d like to see if she can add that to her game.

Sevgi Uzun

Strengths: The Turkish rookie unexpectedly earned a roster spot out of training camp. And, mostly by default, she’s been the best non-Arike ball handler on the team for most of the year. She’s confident bringing the ball up and initiating offense.

Uzun has some decent playmaking chops. Her 3.2 assists per game are 23rd in the WNBA, and that number was a lot higher until she started losing minutes to Odyssey Sims on a hardship contract.

Uzun has also shown flashes of a decent driving game. Again, she’s comfortable with the ball in her hands and can occasionally get all the way to the rim.

Defensively, Uzun has actually been a difference maker by on/off numbers. When she’s on the court the Wings have a defensive rating of 105.4. Not good, but not the worst. When she’s off the court, that number balloons to 113.3. She’s averaging one steal per game, too.

Weaknesses: It starts and ends with the jumper for Uzun. She’s shooting just 35.6% from the field and 23% from three. Defenses generally ignore her and she rarely makes them pay. Though she isn’t afraid to shoot off the dribble, it rarely goes in. A lot of her misses aren’t close.

The lack of a jumper for a point guard who isn’t an advantage creator makes life difficult on offense for Uzun. She doesn’t have much of a role on that end of the floor. Arike Ogunbowale is the primary ball handler most of the time and Uzun brings little off-ball value.

Uzun’s one-on-one defense leaves a bit to be desired. She holds her own, but she’s not super athletic and doesn’t have great size, so she’s never going to be a stopper.

Future with Dallas: Uzun is a nice story. She’s only the second player from Turkey to play in the WNBA. It’s cool that she made the team out of camp and earned a major role. I think she’s shown enough to warrant a WNBA roster spot. Should it be with Dallas? I don’t necessarily think so. I’m hoping the Wings draft a point guard this spring, and 2024 draft pick Carla Leite could come over from France next year, too. It’s tough to see a role for Uzun in the future.

Lou Lopez Senechal

Strengths: Lopez Senechal has fallen completely out of the rotation and has barely seen the floor in her rookie season. She was drafted fifth overall in 2023 because of her excellent shooting and off-ball movement. You can see the vision.

And though she hasn’t been able to show it much, she’s a pretty good passer for a two-guard.

Weaknesses: The advanced stats are very unkind to Lopez Senechal. I won’t print them here because they are disastrous. It’s a really small sample size, but the numbers say she’s a liability on offense and defense. The defense, in particular, is untenable right now. It’s why she hasn’t gotten on the floor. Lopez Senechal is tall for a guard at 6’1”, but she looks tiny on the court. She doesn’t have a WNBA body right now and cannot stop WNBA athletes.

Offensively, she’s been tentative, likely due to her short leash. In her rare minutes, she hasn’t taken or made enough shots.

Future with Dallas: I was high on Lopez Senechal in the 2023 draft. Her shooting is so good. Dallas must give her a real look for the rest of the year. They need to see what she can do and give her reps so she can grow. Let her play through the mistakes. Let her understand what it takes to be a WNBA athlete by competing against them. The Wings invested a top-five pick in Lou; parking her on the bench for a 7-22 team isn’t doing anyone any favors. She might not be a WNBA-caliber player, but they need to find out for sure before they move on.

Stephanie Soares

Strengths: No one in the WNBA has been misused more than Soares this year. Stuck behind veterans Teaira McCowan and Kalani Brown, Soares’s main path to playing time has been at the four or even the three. But she’s a five. The Wings seem to think she’s a stretch five, as they always have her spotting up at the three-point line. She can shoot it a bit and has hit two threes in limited action this year.

Soares is also pretty mobile for her size at 6’6”. Again, she hasn’t gotten to showcase it very much, but she is a potential impact defender.

Weaknesses: The shooting is not good enough to be a stretch big right now, which is what Dallas has asked her to be. And in her limited time, she hasn’t shown much else on offense.

Defensively, it isn’t clear if Soares can be a plus rim protector. The extent of her versatility on D isn’t known either. We need more tape at the WNBA level.

Future with Dallas: Like Lopez Senechal, the Wings invested a major asset in Soares. They traded Atlanta’s 2025 first-rounder (at this time a lottery pick in the Paige Bueckers sweepstakes) to draft her fourth overall in 2023. They need to see what they have. Soares needs to play real minutes at the five. She could be good! We just don’t know. Dallas would be wise to carve out a role for her to end this season. Regardless, she deserves a proper chance in 2025.