The John R. Wooden Award watch list, recognizing the top candidates for the most outstanding player in college basketball, is down to 25 players. Several teams have two candidates on the 2022-23 midseason list released last week, and players like Aliyah Boston and Catlin Clark have appeared on it multiple times. Others are seeing their name in contention for the award for the first time.

The list is chock full of talent, but some players stand out as better than the rest. Just Women’s Sports has narrowed the list down to the top seven, in no particular order.

Aliyah Boston, senior, South Carolina

Boston will be the player all others are compared to as the reigning National Player of the Year, and she sets a high standard. The senior forward is the best player on the No. 1 team in the country, and she’s just as good on offense as she is on defense. She impacts every aspect of the game for the undefeated Gamecocks, whether it’s scoring, blocking shots or rebounding. Even when she isn’t showing up in the stat sheet, Boston is helping South Carolina. The thing that will hurt her POY chances is actually the part of her game that shows just how talented and smart Boston is, as coach Dawn Staley referenced last week: Her numbers are down from last season.

During her POY and DPOY campaign in 2021-22, Boston averaged 16.8 points and 12.5 rebounds per game. This year, she’s contributing 11.5 points and 9.3 rebounds per contest. A lot of that comes down to the way teams are defending the forward. She’s been double- and triple-teamed every time she touches the ball, and often stopped from catching it entirely with defenders packing the paint. Instead of forcing the issue, Boston has continued to let the game come to her and deferred to her teammates when defenses throw multiple defenders at her. Boston knows she doesn’t need to put up the same numbers as she did last season for South Carolina to win games, and she is sacrificing her personal stats for the greater good of the team.

Cameron Brink, junior, Stanford

When Brink is on the floor, she’s arguably the most talented player in the country. The junior can score inside, pull defenders outside by hitting 3-pointers and block shots, all of which infuse the Cardinal lineup with energy. At 6-foot-5, her skill set makes her a mismatch for any opponent. The problem with Brink is one she has admitted on several occasions: foul trouble. Brink doesn’t have any speed other than 100 percent, and that costs her and Stanford at times. She commits 3.8 fouls per 40 minutes on average, which is why she plays only 21.5 minutes per game. Fellow Stanford stars Hannah Jump and Haley Jones, in comparison, average 29 and 28 minutes per game, respectively.

In her limited action, Brink contributes 13.9 points, 9.4 rebounds and 3.1 blocks per game. Now, imagine those numbers if she stayed on the court for an extra five minutes per contest. If Brink can stay disciplined in the second half of the season and guide her team to wins over top Pac-12 opponents like UCLA, Oregon, Utah and Arizona, then her case for POY becomes much stronger.

Aaliyah Edwards, junior, UConn

When the season started, it was Edwards’ UConn teammate, Azzi Fudd, who was a top candidate for Player of the Year. But as UConn has battled injury after injury — including one that’s sidelined Fudd since early December — Edwards was the constant calming force for the Huskies. Paige Bueckers went out before the season started, and freshman Ice Brady followed soon after. Then Dorka Juhász broke her thumb, Nika Mühl sustained a concussion and Caroline Ducharme battled neck stiffness. Through it all, Edwards continued to perform at a high level. Despite injuring her ankle last week against Xavier, Edwards is averaging 16.5 points, 9.5 rebounds and 2.8 assists, all while shooting an efficient 63.4 percent from the field.

It’s safe to say that without Edwards’ contributions, the Huskies wouldn’t be 13-2. That only adds to her case for the POY award, which recognizes a player who brings irreplaceable value to their team. On the flip side, as a big, Edwards will be compared against Boston, who has similar but more polished skills. And when Fudd comes back, the guard will demand much of the national attention and likely eclipse Edwards as UConn’s top player in many peoples’ eyes. All that being said, Edwards deserves serious consideration because of the way she’s anchored her squad in the midst of chaos.

Caitlin Clark, junior, Iowa

Last season, Clark and Boston were locked in a two-way battle for POY. This year, there are other players with strong cases as well, but Clark remains one of the top options. The junior guard averages 27.2 points per game (third in the country), 7.4 rebounds and 6.7 assists (ninth in the country). Every team Iowa plays has to center its entire defensive game plan around Clark because she’s such a dynamic scorer. The junior has a plethora of moves, sees the court well and can shoot from long, long range. What she does on the court hasn’t been seen in the college game before, and that certainly gives her bonus points in the POY race.

Clark lost out to Boston last season because the South Carolina forward had a defensive edge. Clark isn’t a weak defender by any means; it just isn’t one of her strengths. Plus, with the heavy offensive load she carries, the Hawkeyes would rather she didn’t expend too much energy on defense. She still contributes in multiple ways: Clark leads her team in assists and has already set the record for the most triple-doubles in the Big Ten, among men or women, with seven in her career.

Aneesah Morrow, sophomore, DePaul

There is no denying Aneesah Morrow’s talent, which is why she remains one of the top candidates for the award. The sophomore averages a double-double with 26.1 points and 12.1 rebounds per game, which is fourth and sixth in the country, respectively. She’s also had multiple 40-plus-point games this season and has finished with fewer than 20 points in just three of her 16 games played. Morrow is consistently dominant, no matter the opponent, but the issue with her POY campaign comes down to the team she plays for.

DePaul is unranked after suffering losses to Marquette, Creighton, Louisville, Towson, Cleveland and Northern Illinois. The Blue Demons did upset Maryland in November behind Morrow’s 22 points and 10 rebounds, but the team as a whole needs to step up if Morrow has a shot at the award. DePaul must enter the top 25, at least, for her to become a legitimate contender.

Angel Reese, sophomore, LSU

The more I see from Angel Reese, the more I like her for this award. The forward’s numbers are incredible, with 24.2 points per game (sixth in the country), and an NCAA-leading 15.6 rebounds per contest. And while she’s done it against a lot of weak competition — LSU has had to answer to its conference schedule — Reese has two big things working in her favor. The first is that, even against lesser competition, she never has an off-game. Reese has had a double-double in all 15 of LSU’s games this season.

The second is that, in the few games LSU has been tested, Reese has answered, playing the same way she does against lesser opponents. She had 25 points and 20 rebounds against Oregon State on Dec. 18, and 19 and 16 against Arkansas a week later. LSU’s best competition is still to come, when the Tigers take on No. 1 South Carolina in February. Reese has a chance to cement herself as one of the league’s top players if she performs at a high level against the Gamecocks. If LSU keeps winning and establishing legitimacy in the top-25 poll, Reese becomes more and more attractive as a POY candidate.

Alissa Pili, junior, Utah

Despite being the best player on an undefeated, top-10 team, Pili manages to stay under the radar. It’s time the forward received national attention. In her first season with Utah after transferring from USC, Pili has taken the team to another level, with the 14-1 Utes ranked No. 8 in the AP Poll. Thanks to its high-powered offense, Utah is ranked fourth in the country with 87.3 points per game. In a sea of scorers, Pili still manages to stand out. The 6-2 forward leads her team in both points (19.3) and rebounds (5.9), while shooting 62.8 percent from the field.

Pili’s high shooting percentage becomes even more impressive when you look at the multitude of shots she takes. Though Pili is a strong big with a traditional build, her game has dimension. She can score down low or stretch the floor, where she shoots 40.6 percent from beyond the arc. Pili’s challenge in the POY race is lack of attention. Though Utah plays in a strong conference and is a top ranked team, the Utes don’t have the name recognition of teams like UConn and Stanford. Pili will have a chance to prove herself on the national stage however, with difficult Pac-12 matchups against Arizona, Stanford, Oregon and UCLA on their schedule.

Eden Laase is a Staff Writer at Just Women’s Sports. Follow her on Twitter @eden_laase.

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony this afternoon. 

The Team USA standout is the most decorated women’s swimmer in the sport’s history. In addition to her seven Olympic golds, she’s also won a total of 21 gold medals at the World Championships, the most of any swimmer regardless of gender. 

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The esteemed award recognizes those who have "made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," according to a White House press briefing. 

Ledecky is one of 19 medal recipients chosen by the Biden administration this year. She joins a class that spans the worlds of politics, sports, film, human rights, religion, and science. Her fellow 2024 awardees include Everything Everywhere All at Once actress Michelle Yeoh, pioneering Hispanic astronaut Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, plus posthumous winners Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the US, and assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 

Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and USWNT legend Megan Rapinoe were among 2022’s class of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. Biles and Rapinoe were the fifth and sixth women athletes to be given the honor, making Ledecky the seventh.

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.