Golden State Valkyries Projected to Pick Former Stanford Star in WNBA Draft

While we are still a few months away from the WNBA Draft, the arrival of the Golden State Valkyries in their inaugural season is highly anticipated, as is who they could end up selecting with the No. 5 overall selection.

While Paige Bueckers out of the University of Connecticut is the presumptive No. 1 pick, landing with the Dallas Wings, how the draft shakes out from there could go in a number of directions. At the beginning of the women's college basketball season, USC's Kiki Iriafen was slotted to go second in the draft, but more recent mocks have a new number two in Notre Dame's Olivia Miles.

With USC sitting at 16-1, the team is performing just fine, but some mock drafters believe that Iriafen's slight decline in production (along with the ascendance of Miles) will see Iriafen fall a couple of spots. How far will be the big question, but right now, multiple mock drafts have landed her with the Valkyries.

The Los Angeles native spent her first three seasons playing with Stanford, alongside Cameron Brink and company, but with a switch to the ACC and a coaching change looming, Iriafen decided to enter the transfer portal last spring, and ended up with USC for her final year of eligibility.

This season with USC, the 6-foot-3 Iriafen is averaging a career-high 28.8 minutes per game, though her points per contest have dropped slightly to 18.6 (19.4 in 2023), while her rebounding has also slowed (8.6 compared to 11), and her assists have also taken a slight dip (1.8 to 2.3).

The production has still been solid for Iriafen, just not what she put up last season. Part of that could be working her way into a new system in a new program, and part of it could be the personnel around her also being different, and in some areas, better. In other words, she's not needed to produce as much this season.

The team is 16-1 after all.

If she ends up dropping to Golden State at five, that would be fortuitous. Iriafen is the type of player that could be a solid, foundational piece of a contending team before long, and with the Valkyries starting from scratch, they could use a few of those.

One reason that the Valkyries could look in a different direction with the fifth pick is that the team is apparently going to be hoisting a lot of three pointers.

Kate Martin says she, Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase and GM Ohemaa Nyanin have been in communication, talking about what they want their identity and style of play to be.

“We want to shoot a lot of 3s, just play fast paced… I try to implement that into my practice every day.”
— Kendra Andrews (@kendra__andrews) January 16, 2025

In her last five games, Iriafen has attempted just one shot from beyond the arc. It didn't go in. Three pointers aren't a big part of her game.

The Valkyries also have the most cap space out of any WNBA team at $1.2 million, so they can attack the free agent market however they see fit. That said, this free agent period is expected to possess a lot of short-term deals with a new CBA likely to change the landscape of the league in the next year.

From ESPN: "With the league and its players association beginning the process of negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and the expectation that the salary cap will jump dramatically thanks to escalating national TV deals that begin in 2026, virtually every veteran WNBA player will be a free agent in 12 months."

How these factors impact the way the Valkries will draft in April remains to be seen, but if Kiki Iriafen is available at No. 5, she could be the big piece that they're looking to build from for 2025 and beyond.