Tiana Mangakahia undrafted in 2021 WNBA Draft dailyorange.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailyorange.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Experts weigh in on Tiana Mangakahia’s WNBA draft stock
Courtesy of Rich Barnes | USA TODAY Sports
Tiana Mangakahia finished fourth on the team in 3-point percentage (34%).
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For much of her three seasons at Syracuse, all-time assist leader Tiana Mangakahia controlled the game on the floor. But on Thursday, her professional fate will be left up to 12 WNBA teams with 36 picks between them.
Five Orange players have been drafted in program history, most recently teammates Brittney Sykes and Alexis Peterson in 2017. But none of their college journeys compare to the remarkable path of SU’s fifth-year point guard.
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After her final year with Syracuse, fifth year point guard Tiana Mangakahia was named an All-American honorable mention by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association on Monday.
While Mangakahia’s scoring average decreased to 11.4 points per game after a year sidelined with breast cancer, the veteran led the nation for the second season with 7.2 assists per game.
“She’s just a really tough kid, every reason to quit and she didn’t quit, she came back and gave it everything she had,” SU head coach Quentin Hillsman said of Mangakahia after Syracuse’s second round loss in the NCAA Tournament to UConn. “I told her, 60% of her is better than 100% of the rest of the country.”
5 years after: SU ‘proved everyone wrong’ with program’s deepest NCAA run
Courtesy of SU Athletics
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Ahead of Syracuse’s matchup with No. 1 seed South Carolina in the 2016 Sweet 16, head coach Quentin Hillsman told the team that their flight back to central New York had already been scheduled. Center Briana Day remembered the conversation few expected SU to make a deeper run, so the flight from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to central New York was planned in anticipation of the season-ending loss.
The pressure was minimal, Day said. The Gamecocks had eliminated the Orange the year prior in a 29-point thrashing, sending SU home in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. But in 2016, Syracuse defeated the Gamecocks 80-72 in the Sweet 16. And in the Elite Eight, the Orange pulled off the unexpected. Alexis Peterson dribbled near midcourt, fending off Tennessee’s Alexa Middleton while the clock at Denny Sanford PREMIER Ce