On to the WNBA! South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso drafted No. 3 overall
Welcome to the WNBA, Kamilla Cardoso.
The Chicago Sky drafted Cardoso No. 3 overall during the first round of Monday night’s WNBA Draft in New York City, giving the former Gamecocks star a new professional home a week after she helped the South Carolina women’s basketball team win its third national championship.
Cardoso, USC’s 6-foot-7 starting center, was named the Most Outstanding Player of the 2024 Final Four after averaging 18.5 points, 14 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per game in wins over N.C. State in the semifinals and Iowa in the title game.
She was also named the 2024 SEC Defensive Player of the Year, a first-team All-SEC player and an All-American by various media outlets as coach Dawn Staley and the No. 1 Gamecocks finished the season a perfect 38-0.
Cardoso — a native of Brazil who started her college career at Syracuse — could have returned to South Carolina and used a fifth COVID year of eligibility but announced during USC’s NCAA Tournament run she’d be entering the WNBA after her senior season.
She finished her time in Columbia as a two-time national champion (Cardoso also backed up Aliyah Boston at center on USC’s 2022 title team) and averaged a career-high 14.4 points and 9.7 rebounds per game as a starter this season.
A fearsome presence in the paint, Cardoso shot 59.4% from the field as a senior at USC and 57.5% in her college career while blocking 263 shots (2.1 per game) in four years.
Most mock drafts had Cardoso getting drafted at either No. 3 or No. 4 in Monday’s draft held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo raved last week on a media conference call about Cardoso’s dominant showing in the 2024 tournament
“A lot of people have been talking about her ability to run the floor as a 6-7 post player and her relentlessness in doing it on every single possession,” Lobo said April 11. “And when she demands the basketball, which she did every possession over the course of the last month of the season, she just has to demand extra attention inside and she’s very good at passing out of double teams.”
“She’s a very good rim protector on the interior. So I think especially the effort with which she played again over the last three or four weeks of the season really opened a lot of people’s eyes.”
South Carolina WBB’s draft history
A year after South Carolina produced a record-tying five picks in the 2023 WNBA Draft, Cardoso was the only Gamecock who entered the draft this year and will be the only former USC player selected.
Cardoso is the 19th all-time WNBA draft pick from South Carolina and the 15th draft pick in the Staley era (since 2008). She’s also the 13th all-time first round pick (11th under Staley), and with her selection the Gamecocks have seen at least one player selected in eight of the last 10 WNBA drafts.
