The last time Madina Okot and Lauren Betts shared a court, a national championship was on the line. On Sunday at Gateway Center Arena in College Park, Georgia, they met again — this time as professional players, this time in WNBA preseason jerseys, and this time with an entirely different kind of stakes. The rematch delivered exactly the kind of physicality and drama that anyone who watched that NCAA National Championship remembered vividly — and while the Washington Mystics ultimately prevailed 83-72, the story of this game was far bigger than the final scoreline.
It belonged to Madina Okot. And it belonged to the growing South Carolina pipeline quietly taking over the Atlanta Dream.
Okot’s Moment
Before anything else is discussed, the image tells the story first. Okot — wearing No. 11 in the Atlanta Dream’s white uniform — draining her first professional three-pointer, teammates rushing to celebrate with her in the kind of pure, unfiltered joy that only a milestone moment produces. Her first three as a pro. Captured. Preserved. Proof that the 6-foot-6 Kenyan-born center from South Carolina is not simply surviving at the professional level — she is expanding her game within it.
In the final preseason game against the Washington Mystics, Madina Okot was a bright spot for the Dream, and head coach Karl Smesko made no effort to hide his admiration. “I’m really impressed with Madina’s potential,” Smesko said after the game. “All the things she’s able to do.”
Against the Mystics on Sunday, Okot finished with 9 points, 6 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal, and 2 blocks — a well-rounded performance in a game that ended with Washington defeating Atlanta 83-72 at Gateway Center Arena in College Park before an attendance of 3,229.
Those 2 blocks are worth pausing on specifically. In a game where Lauren Betts — the 6-foot-7 Stanford product who shared that championship floor with Okot in the NCAA Finals — was the most physically imposing presence on Washington’s roster, Okot answered with interior defensive presence and a willingness to go at one of the WNBA’s most celebrated young big players without hesitation. The same competitive fire that made Okot extraordinary at South Carolina does not diminish in the presence of bigger stages. It intensifies.
The Preseason Picture: A Star Being Born in Real Time
Zoom out from the individual game and the preseason statistical portrait of Madina Okot tells a genuinely startling story. Across the Atlanta Dream’s preseason schedule, she averaged 11.5 points, 8.5 rebounds, 1.0 blocks, and 22 minutes per game — numbers that represent not a prospect still finding her footing, but a legitimate interior force making an immediate case for meaningful rotation minutes from the season’s very first game.
For context: 8.5 rebounds per game during preseason, for a rookie, in just 22 minutes of playing time, is a rebounding rate that would project to one of the league’s most dominant rebounders at full minutes. The 11.5 scoring average reflects the post skill set that South Carolina developed meticulously — the footwork, the low-post finishing, and now, as Sunday demonstrated definitively, the perimeter capability to drain a professional three-pointer.
Head coach Karl Smesko had already signaled his belief in Okot before the preseason was complete: “We all know how competitive Angel [Reese] is. Madina [Okot] doesn’t back down. She’s not afraid of these situations. She’s come in and she knows she belongs, and she knows she still has stuff to learn, but she knows she can do things at this level already.”
She knows she belongs. That phrase, delivered by her professional head coach about a rookie before the regular season has even begun, is perhaps the most important sentence written about Madina Okot’s professional trajectory thus far.
In the Dream’s first preseason game against the Chicago Sky, Okot turned in a team-leading 14 points and 11 rebounds in her initial 22:37 of playing time. A 14-and-11 performance in a WNBA debut. As a rookie. Against professional competition. The benchmark was established immediately — and Sunday’s performance against Washington confirmed it was not a fluke.
First-round pick Madina Okot is going to be safe to make the roster, and in a game where the starters didn’t see many minutes, her effort on both sides of the ball stood out to Karl Smesko.
The Game Itself: When The Gamecocks Weren’t Enough
The outcome of Sunday’s game was in doubt for the first half, with the Mystics and Dream trading single-digit leads. Atlanta led 44-42 at the half. But Washington broke through in the third quarter when they held the Dream to 20 percent shooting, outscoring them 22-11. The Dream rested their entire starting lineup from this point forward, but the Mystics were playing their starters for much of it and took care of business.
The final: Washington 83, Atlanta 72. Lauren Betts led Washington with 17 points, 4 rebounds, and 3 assists — giving the NCAA championship subplot its WNBA chapter ending in Washington’s favor on this particular Sunday. But in the larger arc of what is being built in Atlanta, the result of a preseason finale with a rested starting lineup carries limited analytical weight.
The Dream’s South Carolina Pipeline: Three Gamecocks, One Vision
Madina Okot’s emergence does not exist in isolation. The Atlanta Dream currently house three former South Carolina Gamecocks on their roster — Okot, Allisha Gray, and Te-Hina Paopao — and the collective output of that trio during the preseason has been one of the most compelling storylines in the league’s buildup to the regular season.
Gray, the Dream’s veteran perimeter anchor and first-team All-WNBA honoree, brings championship experience and the kind of shot-making versatility that opposing defenses cannot scheme around without paying a price elsewhere. Paopao, entering her second professional season, has spent the preseason proving that her rookie year was not a ceiling — it was a foundation. The combination of all three former Gamecocks in the same professional system, operating under the same coaching philosophy, chasing the same organizational championship goal, is the South Carolina pipeline made tangible and professional.
The Dream locked down the opposition from beyond the three-point line last year, but they struggled in the mid-range zone, allowing opponents to shoot 39.2 percent from the area. Okot’s interior dominance addresses that vulnerability directly. Her presence as a rim-protecting, rebounding, shot-blocking force changes the defensive calculus that opposing offenses must navigate — and her developing three-point range, announced loudly on Sunday with that first professional make, ensures she cannot be sagged off and ignored on the other end.
What Comes Next
The WNBA regular season tips off May 8th. Atlanta enters it as genuine contenders — the Dream are suddenly in the same tier as the Aces, Liberty, Lynx, and Mercury. The infrastructure is in place: veteran leadership, elite perimeter shooting, a coaching staff operating with clarity of vision, and a rookie center averaging 11.5 and 8.5 during preseason who has already earned her coach’s unqualified public confidence.
Madina Okot drained her first professional three-pointer on Sunday in front of a crowd at Gateway Center Arena. She blocked two shots. She grabbed 6 rebounds. She made Lauren Betts earn every inch of every play they shared on the same professional floor.
Dawn Staley built her. Atlanta is about to unleash her.
The rest of the league has been warned. 🐓🏀
