Let’s get right to it: Whether you look at the small picture or the big picture, what Jonquel Jones has achieved in her career, and especially in this MVP-caliber season, is mindblowing.

We can call the “small picture” what she does on the court, where the 6-foot-6 forward combines a mix of strength, touch, determination and elite skills to average 19.4 points (on a buttery mix of post moves, fadeaways and face-up 3-pointers to the tune of 1.5 triples a game), 1.3 blocks and a WNBA-leading 11.2 rebounds per game. Jones is the unquestioned leader of this year’s powerhouse team, the Connecticut Sun, who led the league during the regular season with a 26-6 record and begin their playoff run this week in the semifinals against the Chicago Sky.

Jones compares her game most directly to former NBA MVP Kevin Durant, and he enthusiastically co-signs the match even if he’s not nearly the rebounder Jones is. While the achievements themselves may not be quite unprecedented (a few past MVPs have posted similarly impressive statistical seasons), the way Jones plays inside and out has arguably never been seen before.

"Jonquel Jones is the one that comes off top of mind. She reminds me of myself with her length and how she shoots the ball. I'm a huge fan of her." — Kevin Duranthttps://t.co/jbJaTjzKoV

— Meredith Cash (@mercash22) July 15, 2021

The “big picture” would be where this unbelievable talent came from before unleashing herself on the WNBA: a country (The Bahamas) with a negligible history in the sport, and then a college (George Washington University) with a decent history of team success in hoops but an equally negligible history of actually producing WNBA players, let alone the best player in the league.

And what was that path? While it’s been shared over the years, it’s a story worth retelling because, MVP favorite or not, we’re talking about a player who was nowhere to be found on the WNBA’s top-selling jersey list and has a small social-media presence. It stands to reason that this undercoverage is related to fans’ lack of awareness, because once you grasp Jonquel Jones’ story … it’s impossible not to, well, like, follow and share.

“I’m so proud of her,” gushes Diane Richardson, Jones’ high school coach and temporary legal guardian. We’re chatting over the phone in mid-September, the day after Jones’ Sun whomped the Liberty 98-69. “She called me after the game like she always does to review the tape. I told her I hadn’t watched the game yet, but I’d call her once I did. So I did, and we talked about where and how she’s getting double-teamed, her positioning, stuff like that.”

This was after a 30-point win.

How’d we get here? As essential as Richardson, now the head coach at Towson University, is to most phases of Jones’ life in basketball, the story begins before high school, of course.

Jones was born in 1994 in Freeport, the second-biggest city in The Bahamas. She was a soccer lover at first, but by 12 she’d transitioned that passion to hoops. Finding the facilities, coaching and overall support for the sport lacking in The Bahamas, Jones told her mother she would go to high school in the States and play college basketball.

While that path was extremely rare, Jones was determined, and had a role model to show the way. “Coach Yo!” Jones exclaims over the phone. “She’s the one.”

Coach Yo is Yolett McPhee-McCuin, now the head coach at Ole Miss. Spurred by her father, Gladstone “Moon” McPhee, who coached many kids in The Bahamas (including Jones and the NBA’s Buddy Hield), McPhee-McCuin was the first Bahamian woman to earn a letter of intent from a Division I college. She played at and graduated from Rhode Island after spending two years at Miami-Dade Community College.

Jones learned from McPhee’s basketball path. She also knew a local, Jurelle Nairn, who had attended Riverdale Baptist High School in Maryland as an exchange student. Nairn connected the 13-year-old, high school freshman to Riverdale Baptist coach Diane Richardson and they began speaking.

“I spoke with Jonquel and her mother. She wanted to play here, but tuition was a lot. ‘You can apply,’ I told them. Mom said they couldn’t afford that,” Richardson recalls. “We just went our ways for a little, but I called her back a couple of times to check on her. You could tell she and her mom were awesome. Four or five months later, I spoke with my husband: ‘This is a great kid with a great family — can we sponsor her?’ He said yes.”

During her successful tenure at the school in Upper Marlboro, Md., Richardson and her family occasionally sponsored local kids they wanted to help attend, but never international students.

“This was before Facetime,” Richardson continues. “So I’d never looked at her or seen her play. Just talked periodically. Then she came with her parents. They spent a week at my house and got acclimated with my family. We took them downtown, went to the White House and the monuments and spent time with my family. Her mother says, ‘It was meant for me to come here and turn my child over to you.’ My husband and I were honored. She was such a great kid.”

It was September 2008 and the families agreed Jones would move in with the Richardsons, who would eventually become her legal guardians. Riverdale Baptist was a nationally ranked program that didn’t necessarily have minutes for a player as raw as Jones, so she worked on her game at her new home.

“She has a tremendous work ethic,” Richardson says. “We had a court at home and she’d be out there shooting at 5 a.m. When she came over, she was actually behind our team with her skills. We played for the national championship that first season and she was the only player not to get in. She cried in the car on the way home. I told her, ‘You’re not ready and I’m not gonna play any favorites. You need to work.’”

So she did. Jones would launch shot after shot on the Richardson’s court — including from deep. “My husband and I both played college basketball and he taught her to shoot 3s,” Richardson says. “We’d play 3s and 2s and she’d get so mad when my husband would make 3s. So she practiced them.”

Jones also kept growing, and studying the game. “[Coach Richardson] started showing me video clips of great players that I should learn from,” Jones says today. “A mix of players that would make me a better overall player: Candace Parker, Delle Donne, Hakeem Olajuwon and KD. KD was always my favorite.” (Jones’ No. 35 with the Sun is no coincidence.)

Jones’ unique origin and late start to high school playing time meant she didn’t get much college attention until very late in her high school career. She received her first college letter after 10th grade from Brown University, a school not known for its basketball program.

The experienced Richardson knew she had something special, though. “She saw the potential,” Jones remembers. “She would look at the players ranked ahead of me and say, ‘I’ve seen this girl. She’s not better than you.’ She really recognized what I could be before anyone else and put that confidence in my head.”

Eventually, the recruitniks came around. As Jones was finishing high school, she moved up to No. 17 in ESPN’s national rankings and received an offer from UNC.

Remember when Jonquel Jones (@jus242) was playing high school ball at Riverdale Baptist (@_crusadernation)? 7 years later, she's one of the best players in the #WNBA, and her team is in the Finals @ConnecticutSun pic.twitter.com/oOQvqq3rGm

— WUSA9 Sports (@WUSA9sports) September 23, 2019

Jones chose Clemson, where McPhee-McCuin was a fast-rising assistant coach. When things didn’t work out at Clemson, Jones transferred back “home,” enrolling at GW in Washington, D.C., where Richardson had become an assistant coach.

“My youngest son, Michael, was going through some things and Jonquel said, ‘I gotta come home for my little brother,’” Richardson says. “When she decided to transfer, Baylor, Louisville, everyone was calling about her. I knew there would be bigger programs for her. Her wanting to be home for Michael was touching. We lived about 45 minutes from GW, so she lived on campus but came home on weekends and holidays. And she just kept working. She was always practicing. People would say to me, ‘Every time I walk past the Smith Center, Jonquel is in there, putting up shots.’”

Lisa Cermignano is a past GW great (yours truly covered her as the Colonial’s beat writer during their Elite 8 season in 1996-97) who went on to become a successful college coach and now runs the coaching division at SIG Sports, the Maryland-based agency that represents Jones. “I’d watch her GW games and be like, ‘Holy cow!’ For the A10, she was head and shoulders above the rest,” says Cermignano, who also wore No. 35 at GW.

Despite GW’s and the Atlantic 10’s complete lack of relevance at the WNBA level, Jones showed such dominance as a scorer and rebounder that there was no doubting her pro potential. Fueled by Richardson, Jones knew it, too. She was confident she could make it to the W no matter what school she went to after Clemson. “Coach Thibault would come watch our practices and he told me I could play in the WNBA,” Jones says of the current Washington Mystics coach and 2019 WNBA champion.

As a senior, Jones averaged 16.2 points and an NCAA-best 14.6 rebounds per game while leading GW to a 26-7 record, the A10 tournament championship and the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Sure enough, she was the sixth pick of the 2016 draft — the same number her childhood buddy, Hield, was chosen in the NBA draft of the same year. Jones was the first GW player drafted since 2009 and by far the highest ever taken.

Jones took her ever-expanding game up to Mohegan Sun, and after a so-so 2016 season for her and the team, she began an ascension in 2017 that hasn’t abated. That season she won Most Improved Player as the Sun had their first winning season (21-13) since 2012. In 2018, the Sun tweaked her usage, bringing her off the bench in half of their games as they again went 21-13. Jones promptly won Sixth Woman of the Year. The next year, the Sun rode their All-Star to a 23-11 mark and advanced to the WNBA Finals for the first time since 2005, when Jones was just 11 years old.

Last year, of course, was “the Wubble.” Jones, who over the course of her pro career has become a citizen of Bosnia-Herzegovina and starred professionally for Russian power BC UMMC Ekaterinburg alongside the likes of Brittney Griner and Breanna Stewart, sat out the shortened season. She returned to the court for the 2020-21 EuroLeague season and helped Ekaterinburg win the title.

The 2021 regular season has been a lesson in momentum, with Jones building off of her success in Russia and the Sun picking up where they left off in 2019. “There’s definitely been some continuity from 2019,” Jones says. “We had a championship-caliber team that year. But we didn’t have DB [DeWanna Bonner] in 2019. And we haven’t had Alyssa [Thomas] yet this year (though she returned the day after we spoke).”

The Sun rolled to a league-best 26-6 regular season mark, going 15-1 at home and closing the year on a 14-game winning streak. Jones was the WNBA’s Player of the Month in August and September (not to mention May) and has already been named the AP’s Player of the Year. MVP honors (with even more prestige than ours) seem sure to follow.

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“It’s absolutely amazing,” Cermignano gushes. “For all of my former teammates and coaches, it is very special to watch. It was so rare for someone of JJ’s caliber to come into the A10, and then to see what she’s accomplishing is beyond special. It’s close to all of us.”

“I’m so proud of her,” Richardson echoes. “And she’s still working. She just wants to get better and I think she will. Kevin Durant has reached out to her and she’s so excited about that. They’re going to work out together and that’s only going to take her to another level.”

At this point, with the personal accolades flowing in like a waterfall, Jones is more focused on what the Sun can do when they begin their title chase Tuesday night at Mohegan Sun Arena. “It’s championship or bust for us,” Jones says with literally zero hesitation. “There are no excuses. We have everything we need to do it.”

And what would a title mean to Jones?

“The world.”

Ben Osborne is the Head of Content at Just Women’s Sports. He has worked for FOX Sports, Bleacher Report and served as SLAM’s longest-tenured Editor-in-Chief. He has written articles for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post and books with NYU Press and Rizzoli. Follow him on Twitter @bosborne17.

As the world of women’s soccer approaches 2026, the last year may well be remembered for its dynasties.

Chelsea won a sixth straight WSL title, Euros champion England and Copa winner Brazil retained their continental crowns, and Gotham FC lifted a second NWSL trophy in three years.

The winds of change also began to blow in new directions, with Arsenal upsetting Barcelona to win the Champions League final, top NWSL talent departing the US for opportunities overseas, and Kansas City reminding everyone what happens when regular-season dominance meets playoff vulnerability.

Through it all the game continued to grow, with increasingly interesting results on both sides of the pond, as the ramp-up to the 2027 World Cup and a new slate of regional competitions coincide with an ever-shifting economic landscape

So instead of looking back, we’re keeping the spirit of progress alive by presenting five bold predictions for women’s soccer in 2026.

Sophia Wilson’s return: A top contender for 2026 NWSL MVP

News of USWNT Sophia Wilson’s impending return to the Portland Thorns gave NWSL fans a boost earlier this month, with the Triple Espresso forward signing a single-year extension with her original club team.

Expect Wilson to hit the ground running as she comes back from pregnancy. The 2022 NWSL MVP has been very consistent throughout her career, and she’ll be joined by other returning Thorns attackers to bolster her opportunities in front of goal.

Fellow extended Portland star Olivia Moultrie will be paramount to the 25-year-old’s MVP campaign, especially as Wilson looks to challenge two-time reigning MVP Temwa Chawinga.

Don’t bet against Wilson showing shades of Alex Morgan’s 2023 Golden Boot run. That's when the USWNT legend blew past expectations for what new mothers could achieve in their first season back on the pitch.

No repeat champs: Why the women's soccer guards are changing in 2026

Reigning WSL winner Chelsea’s repeat bid is already shaky, with Everton snapping their 34-game unbeaten streak earlier this month. And they’re preparing to enter the new year six points behind Manchester City in the league table.

Blues manager Sonia Bompastor has seemed to prefer a static roster rotation. Of course, she’s charged with managing players from two eras: ex-coach Emma Hayes’s success and the team’s modern iteration. If there was a time for a changing of the WSL guard, 2026 is the year.

Stateside, 2025 NWSL Shield winners Kansas City continue to navigate offseason changes. The Current will start 2026 under brand new leadership, after former head coach Vlatko Andonovski announced he’ll move to a Sporting Director role.

ESPN recently reported Kansas City’s plan to hire former MLS head coach Chris Armas in 2026. But without a formal announcement and the offseason clock ticking, the Current might run out of runway to set up a repeat bid.

2025 NWSL champion Gotham has both FIFA and Concacaf Champions Cup commitments this year, complicating their quest as they maneuver a jam-packed season. The club landed one major re-signing in Midge Purce, but forward Ella Stevens departed for expansion side Boston. Thus, the team is left relying on a title-winning core with an average age over 28.

Arsenal hasn’t looked too terribly far off their Champions League game yet. But the subsequent resurgence of Barcelona and OL Lyonnes could see the WSL on the outside looking in once the tournament reaches May's final.

Despite having a few worthy clubs — including strong newcomers Manchester United — the UK league’s chances of claiming another UWCL title appear overshadowed by mainland Europe’s renewed dominance.

Emma Hayes's USWNT: Expect major roster overhauls in 2026

USWNT coach Emma Hayes embraced change in 2025, giving 43 players their first national team cap this year — the most since 2001.

Though the approach came with some speed bumps. The US matching the single-year total loss record with three dropped matches.

Considering Hayes’s approach, it seems that the future of the USWNT has arrived much sooner than expected. And looking back, those losses actually made an emphatic argument for more lineup overhauls — not less.

The team’s November loss to Portugal showcased a veteran midfield trio in Rose Lavelle, Lindsey Heaps, and Sam Coffey. The lineup exposed the old guard’s weaknesses as the team looks to hold ground among the world’s elite.

Remember — Hayes made the call to leave Alex Morgan off the gold medal-winning 2024 Olympic roster. In doing so, she laid the groundwork for even bigger calls as the US gears up for a tough World Cup qualifying run in 2026.

The global talent war: NWSL salary cap faces European threats

The NWSL closes 2025 with flashy off-field headlines and waning on-field enthusiasm, as it attempts to grapple with a rash of overseas departures.

They’ve even gone so far as to institute a new “High Impact Player” rule allowing teams to exceed the salary cap for top talent. The move comes after rejecting the Washington Spirit’s blockbuster play for superstar striker Trinity Rodman.

Viewed as a half-measure to circumvent larger salary cap issues, the NWSL Players Association has come out against the newly approved mechanism.

The union is advocating for the league to raise the base salary cap across the board. This will help clubs keep up in an increasingly competitive global market without destroying parity.

Whether or not the two parties will reach a compromise remains to be seen. Meantime, it leaves NWSL fans to hope for a solution as wealthy European clubs continue to draw top free agents away from the US league.

Of course, money isn’t everything. Raising the salary cap won’t guarantee NWSL favorites remain Stateside, as another league’s pull features more than just a pay bump. Thoughugh should the NWSL figure things out in time, US clubs might bring in a few big names themselves.

Regardless, expect more players to test their abilities in new environments when the transfer window opens back up in January. And it's especially pressing considering the looming World Cup and its national team implications.

The 2026 Men’s World Cup will transform women’s soccer

International soccer’s largest event lands in the US next year, as the 2026 Men’s World Cup promises to reshape football fandom in this country and beyond.

The NWSL remains bullish on the tournament’s ability to convert soccer fans across gender lines. Though the competition itself is subsequently bound to have a serious and immediate impact on the women’s game.

The NWSL plans to pause for the duration of next summer’s World Cup. This is in part due to infrastructural strains, as the tournament takes over venues shared between men’s and women’s club teams. The USWNT’s World Cup qualifying campaign will also hit the breaks, rendering the team’s summer international windows largely meaningless.

And with Concacaf qualifiers kicking off immediately after the 2026 NWSL Championship, top players will have to balance commitments at the end of a long year.

No matter how the 2026 World Cup ends up influencing US soccer culture, it will inevitably present some challenges as the domestic women’s game pushes to be more than an afterthought alongside the sport’s biggest stage.

No. 3 South Carolina basketball suffered a blow this week, as top transfer Ta'Niya Latson exited the Gamecocks' 96-55 win over Providence with a lower leg injury on Sunday.

"She's smiling," South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley said of Latson immediately following the game, offering an optimistic injury update. "She got treatment all through the second half."

The star senior guard, who turned 22 years old last Friday, joined South Carolina after leading Division I in scoring with Florida State last season.

This year, Latson's 16.9 points per game trails only sophomore forward Joyce Edwards's 21.4-point average on the Gamecocks' scoresheet.

While the full extent to Latson's injury and her potential time off the court is still unknown, any absence exacerbates the team's injury woes, as South Carolina lost standout forward Chloe Kitts to a season-ending injury before the 2025/26 campaign tipped off — with the Gamecocks battling additional availability limits throughout their roster all month.

That said, with the recent returns of forward Madina Okot and guard Agot Makeer from concussion protocol, the Gamecock bench is significantly less sparse, with both returnees impacting Sunday's South Carolina victory with a double-double.

Even more, Staley's squad will see additional roster relief when 18-year-old French center Alicia Tournebize joins the team midseason.

How to watch South Carolina basketball this week

The No. 3 Gamecocks will open the new year by tipping off their SEC slate on Thursday, when South Carolina hosts unranked Alabama at 2 PM ET.

The clash with the Crimson Tide will air live on SEC+.

The world's tennis stars are preparing to open 2026 play in Australia this weekend, with top WTA and ATP leaders on Team USA gearing up to defend their United Cup title starting this Friday.

The two-time champion US enters as the No. 1 seed in the fourth edition of the hard-court tournament, bolstered by the return of world No. 3 Coco Gauff to lead Team USA's six-player United Cup contingent.

With each tournament bout consisting of one WTA singles match, one ATP singles clash, and one mixed-doubles competition, Gauff notably claimed a straight-sets victory over Polish phenom No. 2 Iga Świątek to secure the 2025 title for the US.

"I'm super excited," the 21-year-old star said prior to this year's United Cup. "I had such a good time in my first year playing with the team, and I'm looking forward to going back."

With the 2026 Australian Open beginning in less than two weeks, the United Cup pits 18 national teams against each other as players from both the women's and men's tours tune up for next year's Slams.

Fellow WTA Top-10 stars Świątek and Italy's No. 8 Jasmine Paolini will join Gauff on the 2026 United Cup court, while fan favorite No. 16 Naomi Osaka will feature for tournament debutant Japan.

Also battling for national pride will be two winners of last season's WTA awards, with 2025 Newcomer of the Year No. 18 Vicky Mboko joining Team Canada and 2025 Comeback Player of the Year No. 11 Belinda Bencic competing for Switzerland.

How to watch the 2026 United Cup

The 2026 United Cup runs January 2nd through 11th, with live coverage airing on the Tennis Channel.

The No. 3 Minnesota Frost are looking to skate up the PWHL table, as the reigning back-to-back champs hope to make up ground before the third-year league breaks for the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Eight games into the 2025/26 season, the Boston Fleet top the PWHL standings with 19 points, trailed by the No. 2 Toronto Sceptres with 14, while the No. 4 Montréal Victoire sit one point behind the Frost with 11.

"Our league is good. Every game is going to be close," Minnesota head coach Ken Klee said last week. "It's just about getting better and keep accumulating points."

With the league's original six teams largely off to a hot start, there's only a few weeks left before players hang up their PWHL jerseys for February's Winter Games.

Teams outside the current playoff chase are also making a statement, as New York Sirens forward Casey O'Brien scored her first pro goals to power the sixth-place squad past the No. 5 Seattle Torrent 4-3 on Sunday — becoming the first rookie to record a hat trick in PWHL history in the process.

"We've been putting in a lot of work in practice and video, focusing on the little things," O'Brien said postgame. "Tonight felt like the payoff."

How to watch this week's PWHL action

The puck drops on the final 2025 PWHL matches on Tuesday, when the No. 3 Minnesota Frost visit the No. 2 Toronto Sceptres at 7 PM ET, airing live on Prime.

Closing out the year on Wednesday, the No. 6 New York Sirens will host the No. 7 Vancouver Goldeneyes at 1 PM ET, with live coverage airing on MSG Network.