While Athletes Unlimited basketball is making an impact on its own, the new domestic league also gives players a platform to showcase themselves for WNBA coaches. Some have yet to crack a roster in the competitive WNBA, and others might be trying to get back into the league’s ranks.

Through three weeks of the inaugural AU basketball season, two players have already benefited from the arrangement. Guard Taj Cole signed a training camp contract with the Connecticut Sun early in the season, and on Tuesday, Kalani Brown did the same with the Las Vegas Aces.

As Week 4 gets underway Wednesday night, here are three players making their case for a WNBA contract of their own.

Essence Carson

Carson, a 13-year WNBA veteran, signed on with AU after taking a year off from basketball. During her career with five WNBA teams, she’s averaged 7.2 points, 2.3 rebounds and 1.2 assists and won a championship with the Los Angeles Sparks in 2016. The former No. 7 overall pick is currently a free agent, having last played for Connecticut in 2020.

Despite the year off, Carson made a seamless transition into AU basketball. Through nine games, she’s averaging 10.7 points, four rebounds and 2.3 assists and is currently 14th on the AU leaderboard with 2,350 points. The guard shined in Week 2, accumulating a season-high 573 points against Team Harrison on Feb. 2 and helping Team Brown to a 3-0 record.

Carson will be on Team Hawkins this week, reuniting with Tianna Hawkins for the first time since her standout performance in Week 2.

Lauren Manis

The Week 3 draft produced some fireworks when Lexie Brown picked Lauren Manis ahead of Natasha Cloud, who protested the selection over the live stream. Cloud had reason to do so: Through nine games this season, Manis is averaging 9.3 points, 5.4 rebounds and 1.3 steals in 22.2 minutes per game, earning MVP 3 honors in Game 13.

“She’s a dog,” Cloud said. “Her motor constantly goes. She does all the little things that won’t necessarily show up on the stat sheet.”

At Holy Cross, Manis was the first player, male or female, to reach 2,000 career points and 1,000 career rebounds. She holds the Patriot League record with 1,188 rebounds for her college career.

The Las Vegas Aces selected Manis 33rd overall in the 2020 WNBA Draft and invited her to training camp last year, but she was waived and wound up overseas, playing for Cegledi in Hungary. While there, she averaged 16 points, 10.4 rebounds and 1.3 assists in eight games.

To back up the production, she has one key WNBA player in her corner.

“Someone’s gonna pick her up, and if they don’t, that’s a huge mistake,” said Cloud, a 2019 champion with the Washington Mystics. “I think that she can come in. Clearly, she is ready to play in the W. She spent that year overseas, she got better, she came back and she’s proving herself in this league.”

Destinee Walker

Walker has come into her own over the past four games and risen steeply up the AU leaderboard as a result. After scoring 22 points for Team Cloud at the end of Week 2, Tianna Hawkins picked her up in Week 3 and she flourished, averaging 14 points, three assists and 2.7 rebounds. In the six games prior to that, Walker averaged 6.8 points, 1.5 rebounds and one assist.

In the final game of the week against Team Brown, Walker recorded 21 points (on 3-for-4 shooting from 3-point range), six rebounds and five assists, vaulting up the leaderboard with an additional 592 points. She’s currently in 16th place on the AU leaderboard with 2,277 total points.

After transferring from North Carolina and playing her fifth and sixth years at Notre Dame, Walker went undrafted in 2021 and was picked up by the Dallas Wings on a training camp contract. She was later cut and made her way overseas, where she played for Niki Lefkadas in Greece.

Walker will be back on Team Hawkins this week, with the potential to make an even greater impact.

Others to watch

• Ty Young (13th on AU leaderboard): 8.7 points, 3.8 assists, 62.7% field goal shooting
• Jessica Kuster (15th): 7.3 points, 4.3 rebounds, 44.4% 3-point shooting
• Sydney Colson (18th): 11.3 points, 5.8 assists, 2.2 rebounds

Emma Hruby is an associate editor at Just Women’s Sports.

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.

With recent transfers Talia von Oelhoffen and Kiki Iriafen joining first-team All-American JuJu Watkins and the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class at USC next season, the Trojans look to transition from an up-and-coming squad to a legitimate title contender. 

Former Oregon State graduate student von Oelhoffen is the latest collegiate talent to commit to the program, announcing her transfer Monday via ESPN. She follows ex-Stanford leading-scorer Iriafen in the jump to the pair’s one-time Pac-12 rival.

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The 5-foot-11 Washington native was a two-time All-Pac-12 guard during her time at Oregon State. But after the recent dissolution of the Pac-12, the Corvallis side found themselves without a permanent home conference going forward. Many big name players opted to take their skill elsewhere as a result, with von Oelhoffen’s fellow ex-Beaver Raegan Beers announcing her own departure to Oklahoma on Monday.

According to DraftKings, USC is now tied with UConn for the second-best betting odds to win the 2025 NCAA women’s tournament. Dawn Staley’s tested South Carolina side, poised for a repeat performance, holds down the number one spot.

Last year, LSU loaded up in the transfer portal after beating Iowa to win the 2023 national championship. The Tigers were clear favorites coming into the 2023-24 season, but were bounced in the Elite Eight by Caitlin Clark’s Hawkeyes. Shortly thereafter, star transfer Hailey Van Lith opted to transfer a second time, this time signing with TCU. 

Yet while history proves that an excess of star power doesn’t always translate to on-court chemistry, on paper, USC sure looks ready to hold their own — in 2025 and beyond.

The United States and Mexico have withdrawn their joint bid to host the 2027 Women’s World Cup, per a Monday afternoon release from U.S. Soccer and the Mexican Football Federation.

According to the statement, they will instead focus on developing a "more equitable" bid for the 2031 tournament, with the ultimate goal of "eliminating investment disparities" between the men’s and women’s tournaments.

The federations went on to cite the upcoming 2026 Men’s World Cup in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as an opportunity to build support for local infrastructure, improve audience engagement, and scale up media and partnership deals in preparation to "host a record-breaking tournament in 2031."

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"Hosting a World Cup tournament is a huge undertaking — and having additional time to prepare allows us to maximize its impact across the globe," said U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone. "Shifting our bid will enable us to host a record-breaking Women’s World Cup in 2031 that will help to grow and raise the level of the women’s game both here at home as well as across the globe."

The decision leaves just Brazil and a joint bid from Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands in the running for the 2027 host spot. Brazil — the rumored frontrunner — has never hosted a Women’s World Cup, while Germany hosted the 2011 tournament as a solo venture. 

Furthermore, this postponement doesn’t mean the U.S. is a shoo-in for 2031, as it's been previously reported that 2022 UEFA Women's EURO host England is considering their own Women's World Cup bid. FIFA is scheduled to confirm the winning bid after the FIFA Congress votes on May 17th.