When the history of women’s basketball’s golden era is eventually written, one thread will run through nearly every chapter: Dawn Staley recruited her, developed her, and sent her to the league ready to be great. The Sporting News just made that argument in ranked form, and the results are striking.
With the 2026 WNBA season officially upon us, The Sporting News released its ranking of the top 30 overall players in the league — and four former South Carolina Gamecocks earned spots on the list. Three of them landed in the top 10. It made South Carolina one of only three programs in the country, alongside UConn and Notre Dame, to place four players among the league’s elite — a distinction that speaks not just to the talent Staley recruits, but to the sustained, multi-year excellence she produces.
No. 1: A’ja Wilson — The Conversation Is Already Over
There was never a question of whether Wilson would top this list. The real question is whether anyone even came close. The answer, based on everything the league’s own general managers have said in preseason surveys, is no.
Wilson enters 2026 as the only four-time WNBA MVP in league history — a record she set herself and has defended with a level of two-way dominance that has no modern comparison in women’s professional basketball. Sixty percent of WNBA general managers already have her as the favorite to win a fifth MVP award. The Las Vegas Aces are the consensus championship favorites. And with every additional season of this caliber, Wilson strengthens a case that is already the most compelling in the sport’s history.
The GOAT conversation in women’s basketball used to be nuanced. At this point, Wilson is constructing her résumé with the kind of deliberateness that makes the debate increasingly one-sided. Another dominant season — which, based on all available evidence, is exactly what is coming — only adds another layer of permanence to that legacy.
No. 7: Allisha Gray — The Best Version Is Playing Right Now
If Wilson’s placement is expected, Gray’s arrival at No. 7 is the ranking that most accurately reflects how much her game has grown since leaving Columbia. The 2025 season was not just a good year for Gray — it was a breakthrough that redefined the ceiling of her professional career.
She earned her third All-Star Game selection, claimed a spot on the All-WNBA First Team, and did it all while the Atlanta Dream evolved from a team rebuilding its identity into a genuine Eastern Conference title contender. Gray is a central reason for that transformation. Her versatility — the ability to guard multiple positions, create off the dribble, and knock down shots from distance — makes her the kind of two-way wing that championship-caliber teams are built around.
The Dream’s emergence as a threat in the East is not a coincidence. It is the product of Gray performing at her highest professional level at exactly the moment the franchise needed someone to step into a leadership role and carry it.
No. 9: Aliyah Boston — Quietly One of the Best, Every Single Year
Four years in the WNBA. Four likely All-Star selections. There is something almost disorienting about how consistent Aliyah Boston has been since the day she entered professional basketball, because consistency at this level is genuinely rare and often goes underappreciated until someone bothers to count the seasons.
Boston’s place on the Indiana Fever makes her part of what may be the most watchable roster in the entire league. The Fever have Caitlin Clark generating attention and offense from the perimeter, and Boston anchoring the interior on both ends — a combination that creates coverage problems for every defense in the league. Her two-way ability down low is precisely the kind of foundational piece that allows the more celebrated names around her to operate more freely.
Back-to-back Gamecock teammates — Boston and the newly acquired Raven Johnson — will now share an Indiana locker room, adding yet another South Carolina thread to one of the W’s most anticipated team storylines heading into 2026.
No. 27: Kamilla Cardoso — The Ascent Is Just Beginning
The growth arc on Kamilla Cardoso is one of the more compelling developmental stories in the WNBA right now, and her placement at No. 27 reflects both where she currently stands and the direction she is clearly moving.
At 6-foot-7, Cardoso possesses a physical profile that simply cannot be manufactured. The tools have always been there. What 2025 demonstrated was that she is learning how to use them with increasing efficiency and basketball IQ at the professional level. For the Chicago Sky, she represents the kind of interior anchor that franchises spend years trying to identify and develop — and she is still very much in the early stages of her professional ceiling.
The jump from promising to dominant for a player of Cardoso’s size and skill set typically doesn’t happen overnight. But the trajectory is pointing in exactly the right direction, and a strong 2026 season could move her considerably higher on lists like this one a year from now.
What Four Names on One List Actually Means
Step back from the individual rankings for a moment and appreciate the collective statement being made. UConn and Notre Dame are two of the most storied programs in the history of women’s college basketball. South Carolina belongs in that sentence now — not as an aspirational comparison, but as a factual peer.
The pipeline from Columbia to the WNBA isn’t accidental. It reflects a program that doesn’t just recruit talent but actively transforms it — turning five-star prospects into professional-caliber players and professional-caliber players into All-Stars and champions. Wilson, Gray, Boston, and Cardoso each took different developmental paths, arrived at different positions on this list, and play for four different franchises. But they all share one common foundation.
Dawn Staley coached them. That, more than anything else, is the thread that binds the ranking together — and the reason why four more names from Columbia will likely be on lists like this one in the years to come.
