The Dream believed so much in Elizabeth Williams that they traded their No. 4 pick in the recent draft to acquire her from Connecticut.
Coach Michael Cooper thinks that the 6-foot-3 center can be the anchor of a defense that needs to improve in several areas and a contributor on offense with her passing and hook shots.
“She has already shown her worth,” Cooper said.
That worth is based upon her modest stats from last season, her play overseas in Turkey and what she has done in training camp. After a four-year All-American career at Duke, she was picked fourth in the 2015 draft. She averaged 3.3 points, 3.2 rebounds and 0.9 blocks in 11.7 minutes per game with the Sun.
She said that entering the WNBA and not being expected to be a big contributor was a different experience. After the season, she got a bit of a confidence boost playing for Istanbul University in Turkey, where she said she averaged 14 points, 10 rebounds and led the league in blocks.
“Going overseas and kind of getting that (feeling) back and then bringing it into the next year is big,” she said.
The Dream needed Williams because it had a fairly big hole at center that started to open last year.
The team’s longtime center, Erika de Souza, got off to a horrible start on offense last season and was traded to Chicago during the season. That left Aneika Henry, a young player who had shown potential on offense and defense in limited minutes.
Knowing they needed another center, Cooper targeted Williams, a four-time All-ACC defensive player of the year, and planned to pair her with Henry in a two-man rotation. But Henry left as a free agent, leaving the Dream where they started, with one center, Williams.
The team’s effort to fix that meant selecting Rutgers’ Rachel Hollivay in the draft’s second round. Like Williams, she is a shot-blocking center (school record 322) and rebounder (4.93 career average).
“Going into the draft and getting Rachel Hollivay with our No. 13 pick was another big plus for us,” Cooper said. “Now we are set with our starting center and reserve center. I think we will be OK.”
Cooper can see them boosting a defense that allowed a league-worst 79.8 points per game and an opponent shooting percentage of 43.6, also on the wrong side of the WNBA’s median last season. Its average of 3.7 blocks and 23.6 defensive rebounds wee also ranked among the fewest. They were the biggest reason the team’s streak of six consecutive playoff appearances was snapped.
“What we are holding her to is she can be a force in the middle defensively,” Cooper said.
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