It has been three weeks since the South Carolina Gamecocks were crowned as NCAA champions, and a lot has already happened in that interim.

Transfers — like South Carolina’s Saniya Rivers and Maryland’s Ashley Owusu and Angel Reese — are going to change the landscape of college basketball next season. Players coming back for fifth seasons and injuries have the potential to do the same. In other words, there is a lot we don’t know about what the 2022-23 season will look like. But it’s still fun to speculate.

If play started today, here’s what the JWS Top 25 would look like.

1. South Carolina

Destanni Henderson was drafted by the Fever, but the rest of South Carolina’s starting five will return, including National Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year Aliyah Boston. The Gamecocks also have 6-foot-7 standout Kamilla Cardoso coming back for her junior season.

That’s more than enough to put the defending champions at No. 1, but that’s not all they have. Raven Johnson, the No. 2 recruit in 2021, will return after missing almost all of last season with a knee injury, and classmates Bree Hall and Sania Feagin will be ready to take on bigger roles.

2. Stanford

The Cardinal are losing a lot in Lexie Hull, Lacie Hull and Anna Wilson, but they retain Haley Jones and Cameron Brink — one of the best guard and post duos in the country. With shooters like Hannah Jump and Ashton Prechtel around them, plus Fran Belibi as another post option, the Cardinal will be more than fine. And the top-rated freshman in the country, 6-7 Lauren Betts, will be ready to contribute right away.

3. UConn

The Huskies lose Olivia Nelson-Ododa and Christyn Williams, two key pieces of their run to the national championship game, but 2020-21 National Player of the Year Paige Bueckers is back and, more importantly, healthy. So is Azzi Fudd.

UConn isn’t a team that ever worries about reloading, welcoming in two top-10 freshmen next fall in No. 4 recruit Ayanna Patterson and No. 5 Isuneh Brady.

4. Iowa

Creighton put a damper on an otherwise stellar end-of-the-season run for the Hawkeyes. Iowa won its last seven games prior to the NCAA Tournament, knocking off teams like Michigan and Indiana to win the Big 10 title. Caitlin Clarke is back, of course, but so are the rest of those Hawkeyes. When Monika Czinano announced she was returning for another year, Iowa instantly put itself in the national title conversation.

5. Iowa State

Here’s another team that’s retaining the bulk of its roster and benefiting from extra eligibility. Ashley Joens isn’t hanging up her Cyclones jersey just yet, which gives this team an instant bump. Joining her are an excellent point guard in Emily Ryan and another solid perimeter player and scorer in Lexi Donarski.

6. Texas

Led by freshman Rori Harmon, the Longhorns played a suffocating, up-tempo style that made them a team nobody wanted to face in March. Harmon will be even better this season, and so will fellow rising sophomore Aaliyah Moore. Senior Aliyah Mathuru will continue to contribute on both ends of the floor, and the ever-annoying Longhorns defense will be just as pesky in 2022-23.

7. North Carolina

I was so impressed by this UNC squad in March. Deja Kelly and Alyssa Utsby played with poise despite being sophomores, and the two will be even more experienced next season. They are a great starting point for the Tar Heels. Kennedy Todd-Williams also started every game as a sophomore, and 6-3 guard/forward Destiny Adams has star potential beyond her freshman season.

8. Ohio State

Jacy Sheldon and Taylor Mikesell proved themselves to be one of the nation’s top backcourt duos during Ohio State’s Sweet 16 run. With those two back, the Buckeyes will be tough once again. Combining them with post player and third-leading scorer Rebeka Mikulasikova should make Ohio State a force in the Big 10 once more.

9. Notre Dame

Olivia Miles led the Fighting Irish to the Sweet 16, where they nearly knocked off No. 1 seed NC State. That experience will be vital for Notre Dame as it looks to build on last season. Sonia Citron got better and better as the year went on, and Dara Mabrey is also returning, meaning four of five starters will be back for a talented Irish squad.

10. Louisville

Emily Engstler’s departure for the WNBA will be the biggest loss for the Cardinals. But Hailey Van Lith and Olivia Cochran, now entering their junior seasons, proved themselves to be a dynamic guard/post duo last season. Payton Verhulst played limited minutes as a freshman, but the former five-star recruit is poised to break out as a strong partner for Van Lith in the backcourt.

11. Tennessee

Rae Burrell may have moved on to the WNBA, but a healthy Jordan Horston and all-time blocks leader Tamari Key make for a solid foundation to build around. Coach Kellie Harper hasn’t wasted any time finding players to add to the roster: Mississippi State transfer Rickea Jackson and former Minnesota guard Jasmine Powell should both contribute right away.

12. Virginia Tech

With leading scorer and rebounder Elizabeth Kitley entering her senior year, and third-leading scorer Georgia Amoore ready to play an even bigger role, the Hokies are in good shape. Kayana Traylor and Cayla King provide them with two other solid scoring options.

13. Arizona

Get used to seeing Arizona in the top 25. Adia Barnes is bringing in a great recruiting class led by two five-stars, forward Maya Nnaji and guard Paris Clark. That young talent coupled with experienced returners Cate Reese, Shaina Pellington and Bendu Yeaney make the Wildcats a Pac-12 frontrunner once again.

14. Creighton

I slept on the Bluejays last season, and I’m not about to make the same mistake. Lauren Jensen, Morgan Maly, Molly Mogensen and Emma Ronsiek are all entering their junior years, and Carly Bachelor will be a senior. That group includes all four of Creighton’s top scorers and the sixth, allowing the Bluejays to continue their dominant, sharp-shooting style of play.

15. Indiana

It’s easy to look at what Indiana lost — Ali Patberg, Aleksa Gulbe and Nicole Cardaño-Hillary — and think this team will falter. But the Hoosiers retain top two scorers in Grace Berger and Mackenzie Holmes and key bench contributor Chloe Moore-McNeil, who blossomed at the end of the season. Oregon transfer Sydney Parrish rounds out the roster, making IU a solid team once more.

16. Kansas State

The Wildcats return their starting five, including their leading scorer and rebounder, 6-6 Ayoka Lee. Three other starters — Serena Sundell, Brylee Glenn and Jaelyn Glenn — also all return. They showed their potential last season, but also their youth. This time, the trio will have more confidence and experience.

17. NC State

Standout post player and Seattle Storm draft pick Elissa Cunane was the focal point of NC State’s offense in 2021-22. Now, you can expect the Wolfpack to be more guard-oriented. Diamond Johnson and Jakia Brown-Turner were NC State’s second- and third-leading scorers, giving the team a great base for the upcoming season.

18. Oklahoma

Ana Llanusa is coming back from injury, while leading scorer Madi Williams and 3-point leader Taylor Robertson will play fifth years. The Sooners also have plenty of role players to work with, as nine players started at various times throughout the past season.

19. Princeton

Losing leading scorer Abby Meyers is a big blow for the Tigers, but second- and third-scoring leaders Julia Cunningham and Kaitlyn Chen will be back. They were key to Princeton’s 25-5 record and upset of Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament. Grace Stone and Ellie Mitchell are also solid pieces to the Princeton puzzle, capable of averaging double digits on any given night.

20. Utah

The Utes dominated Arkansas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, giving us a glimpse of what’s to come. Led by sophomore Kennedy McQueen’s 20 points and freshman Gianna Kneepkens’ 16 in that contest, the Utes showcased their young talent on a big stage. Jenna Johnson (freshman) and Kelsey Rees (sophomore) each scored in double figures as well.

21. Kansas

The Jayhawks were a surprise success story last season, making it to the Big 12 championship game and winning in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. This time, there are expectations. Top scorers Holly Kersgieter and Zakiyah Franklin will lead the way.

22. Gonzaga

The Zags topped Nebraska in the NCAA Tournament and then showed flashes in an 11-point loss to No. 1 seed Louisville. Kayleigh and Kaylynne Truong will be back to lead the squad, but GU fans should be most excited about rising sophomore Bree Salenbien. She didn’t play to end the year due to a knee injury, but the Michigan native is GU’s best prospect in history, and she is poised for a breakout season.

23. UCLA

The Bruins had a disappointing season that ended with an loss in the NIT semifinals, but Charisma Osborne was a bright spot. She will lead UCLA and get help from two talented freshmen — No. 2 recruit Kiki Rice and No. 19 Gabriela Jaquez. It might take time for them to get their footing, but the Bruins should have enough to make some noise later in the season.

24. Nebraska

Another team that had surprising success, Nebraska was upset-minded throughout the Big 10 season. The Huskers return their top eight scorers, bumping them from an upset-type team to a legitimate contender.

25. UNLV

This is a young team that gave Arizona all it could handle in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. That experience will help a talented Rebels squad that returns its top three scorers. Loaded with athleticism, UNLV will be the favorite in the Mountain West.

Eden Laase is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports. She previously ran her own high school sports website in Michigan after covering college hockey and interning at Sports Illustrated. Follow her on Twitter @eden_laase.

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.

On Tuesday, FIFPRO announced the launch of Project ACL, a three-year research initiative designed to address a steep uptick in ACL injuries across women's professional football.

Project ACL is a joint venture between FIFPRO, England’s Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), Nike, and Leeds Beckett University. While the central case study will focus on England’s top-flight Women's Super League, the findings will be distributed around the world.

ACL tears are between two- and six-times more likely to occur in women footballers than men, according to The Guardian. And with both domestic and international programming on the rise for the women’s game, we’ve seen some of the sport's biggest names moved to the season-ending injury list with ACL-related knocks.

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Soccer superstars like Vivianne Miedema, Beth Mead, Catarina Macario, Marta, and England captain Leah Williamson have all struggled with their ACLs in recent years, though all have since returned to the field. In January, Chelsea and Australia forward Sam Kerr was herself sidelined with the injury, kicking off a year of similar cases across women’s professional leagues. And just yesterday, the Spirit announced defender Anna Heilferty would miss the rest of the NWSL season with a torn ACL. The news comes less than two weeks after Bay FC captain Alex Loera went down with the same injury. 

Project ACL will closely study players in the WSL, monitoring travel, training, and recovery practices to look for trends that could be used to prevent the injury in the future. Availability of sports science and medical resources within individual clubs will be taken into account throughout the process.

ACL injuries in women's football have long outpaced the same injury in the men's game, but resources for specialized prevention and treatment still lag behind. Investment in achieving a deeper, more specialized understanding of the problem should hopefully alleviate the issue both on and off the field.