CHICAGO — A minute and a half into the overtime period in an off-the-national-radar Monday night contest, Aaliyah Collins jogged the ball up the floor. Her Chicago State Cougars were tied with Wisconsin 56-56, and the freshman eyed her teammate on the right wing.

In the blink of an eye, Collins crossed over to her left, beat her defender, faked a pass to the left corner, and flipped the ball toward the rim. It didn’t drop, but a foul was called. She calmly sank both free throws.

Outside of the fact that it put her team ahead, few observers at the time were aware of the significance of that moment. You see, those free throws didn’t just give the Cougars the lead — they gave the Cougars the lead for good. On Monday, Nov. 22, 2021, Chicago State won its first basketball game in 674 days.

“We were celebrating like we had won a championship,” Collins says.

The MOMENTS that make it all MATTER! pic.twitter.com/vh6OVWepsc

— Chicago State WBB (@ChiStateWBB) November 23, 2021

Most players of Collins’ caliber aren’t interested in going on to play for a team that just went winless a season ago. Collins, after all, was the 2021 Washington State Girls Basketball Player of the Year. But for the self-described underdog, the fit was perfect.

“Chicago State kind of checked off a lot of the checks on my list that I was looking for in a school,” Collins says. “I really wanted to be close to the city. I wanted a lot of ethnicity. I wanted to be far from home.”

As for the basketball? That only added to her drive.

“People might look at that and then they wouldn’t want to come because of the record,” Collins says. “But who says that can’t be you to help change it?”

Collins has “wanted to prove people wrong” ever since she didn’t make the fifth-grade basketball team almost a decade ago. “Before high school, I wasn’t really the best player,” she says. “I struggled a lot.”

It’s safe to say Collins has already proven plenty of people wrong: Her 2.6 steals per game rank in the top 30 in the country, and she’s the only freshman in Division I averaging at least 14 points, three assists and 2.5 steals per game. The dynamic point guard is on pace to shatter program records in several categories.

It’s the type of season that surely has many coaches kicking themselves. The few Division I offers Collins had received got pulled when the pandemic hit, and she went multiple months without a single scholarship offer.

“It was very discouraging at first,” Collins told Sam Brief last month on the Chi State Pod. “I went through a really tough time of confidence in myself.”

It wasn’t until the winter of Collins’ senior season that her former teammate’s uncle, who had a connection with then-first year Chicago State head coach Tiffany Sardin, put the two in touch.

“I was surprised she was still available,” Sardin says. “We got lucky.”

Due to COVID-19 restrictions at the time, Sardin had to rely on film, phone calls and Zoom during the recruiting process. That included watching clips of Collins running track and showing off her speed.

“She was getting smoked, and then out of nowhere she turned the jets on and won the race,” Sardin recalls. “I had to watch the clip several times thinking, ‘Wow!’”

Once the two connected, it fell on Sardin to convince the high school sensation to come play for a program without a rich history. “I was very honest and answered any and every question Aaliyah and her parents had,” Sardin says. “They were prepared and did a lot of research on Chicago State and me as well.”

Sardin’s biggest selling point? “I did tell her I thought she could be a special player that Chicago State hadn’t seen in a long time,” Sardin says. “If she wasn’t allergic to working hard, being challenged and held accountable … then come be the reason why something is changing.”

Collins committed not long after, and the two have been forming a special bond ever since.

“I have so much respect for that woman,” Collins says. “Before one of our games, she told me, ‘I put a lot of trust in you.’

“I’m like, ‘I’m a freshman — you sure you want to do that?’ But that just kind of stuck with me because that’s a lot for a coach to put trust into a freshman.”

That trust is looking like a wise decision on Sardin’s part as Collins inches closer and closer to becoming Chicago State’s first ever WAC Freshman of the Year. Collins already has five WAC Freshman of the Week awards under her belt, and in January she became the first mid-major player in two years to win the USBWA Tamika Catchings National Freshman of the Week — an honor given in recent seasons to players such as Ayoka Lee, Aliyah Boston, Paige Bueckers, Caitlin Clark, Azzi Fudd and Aneesah Morrow.

But it’s not any individual accolades that Collins is most concerned with.

“I wanna catch some more dubs,” she says.

That mentality is what fueled Collins to lead her high school team to an unbeaten season as a senior; it’s what Sardin referred to when she called Collins a “fierce competitor” upon signing her; it’s what prompted Collins to apologize for a loss to the league’s best team during an interview for this piece.

The true test of that desire to win comes when no one is watching — when the scoreboard is off and the cameras aren’t rolling. It was one of those times, after Collins injured her ankle during a summer workout, that Sardin saw who her top recruit could become.

“She wasn’t going to say a word, just fight through the pain,” Sardin says. “It really bothered her not being able to practice or go full in summer training for a few days. At that moment, I knew this kid was going to be special in this program and league. I’m not sure anyone else would’ve battled through the discomfort and pain she was feeling just to be out on the court training with her teammates.”

When it comes to in-game results, Collins is off to a good start: She’s led Chicago State to three more wins since that first one in November to match the program’s total from the previous five seasons combined. With a young, up-and-coming coaching savant in Sardin at the helm, there will undoubtedly be more where that came from.

As Collins continues to garner more recognition, she credits her family for where she is today. She has two older siblings, Kaela and Anthony, whom she calls her “biggest motivators,” and she attributes her love of the sport to her father, Tony. “[My dad] is very passionate about the game, and he kind of just spread that passion to me,” she says.

Aaliyah also believes Tony, who coached her during her elementary and middle school years, is responsible for her lockdown ability on the court.

“He definitely worked with me a lot on defense because he’s a big believer in defense, too,” she says. “I feel like he’s been a big part of my success in basketball.”

For as much love as Aaliyah has for her parents and siblings, however, they aren’t the ones she’s most excited to talk to when she calls home.

“Sometimes I’ll be calling my parents, and I’ll be like, ‘Where are the cats?’” she says. “Before even really talking to [my parents] I wanna see the cats please!”

That Collins ended up wearing a cougar on her jersey is fitting. Collins’ enthusiasm for her three cats (“those are my babies,” she says) is emblematic of what sets her apart — an ebullient energy that shines through in her play.

That same energy carries over into Collins’ fandom. The native of Snohomish, Wash. pulls for the Seattle Storm — an appropriate choice for a player with shades of former Storm guard Jordin Canada in her game.

Like Canada, Collins hangs her hat on the defensive side of the ball. While her jump shot is a work in progress — ”I have been in the gym day in, day out working on that,” she says — she’s already producing on the offensive end, as well. She’s averaged over 20 points per game in the team’s wins, including 25 against the Badgers in Madison.

It takes an exceptional coach to turn around a losing team, but seemingly every great sports rebuilding story is co-authored by a star athlete, a “face of the franchise” type of player with the perfect blend of talent and personality to elevate both a program’s performance and its marketability. Steve Kerr and Steph Curry took the Warriors from one playoff appearance in 18 years to perennial contenders; Brad Underwood and Ayo Dosunmu brought Illinois men’s basketball back to prominence after years of irrelevance; Adia Barnes and Aari McDonald led Arizona to last year’s national title game three years removed from a 6-24 season.

Chicago State is still climbing the front end of the mountain, but Sardin may have found her Aari McDonald in Aaliyah Collins. So for the first time in recent memory, there is hope for the program on the South Side of Chicago. Hope that behind Sardin, Collins and company, the Cougars are well on their way to “catching some more dubs.”

Calvin Wetzel is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports, covering basketball and betting. He also contributes to Her Hoop Stats, CBS SportsLine and FiveThirtyEight. Follow him on Twitter at @cwetzel31.

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.