After buying and selling as much as the No. 1 total decide within the 2022 WNBA Draft, the Atlanta Dream have lastly discovered their dream gal in Kentucky guard Rhyne Howard. After a two-horse race between her and Baylor ahead NaLyssa Smith for the highest spot, the Dream may need discovered a participant that might be an important constructing block for the way forward for the franchise.
“I simply wish to do this by my aggressive spirit and the need to by no means surrender and at all times battle and simply preserve my composure and keep calm, cool and picked up,” Howard stated.
At 6-foot-2, Howard is a two-time SEC Participant of the Yr, having averaged 20.5 factors, 7.4 rebounds and three.3 assists per sport in her remaining season of school basketball. She was the one participant in Division I to have 600+ factors, 200+ rebounds, 100+ assists, 70+ steals and 35+ blocks in 2021-2022.
Hailing from Cleveland, Tenn., Howard was an impressive athlete at Bradley Central Excessive Faculty, the place she turned the Tennessee Gatorade Participant of the Yr in 2018. It helps that her mom performed basketball on the College of Florida.
That very same yr, Howard selected to decide to Kentucky over the likes of South Carolina and Purdue and shortly made her title as a freshman, profitable nationwide freshman of the yr unanimously in 2019. She took her sport to an entire different stage in her sophomore yr by turning into the nation’s second-leading scorer with 23.4 factors per sport.
“So, I personally suppose I’m very versatile, so no matter place I’m taking part in, I prefer to match for these positions, and in the event that they want me to work on one thing particular, so regardless of the case could also be, I’m prepared to do it,” Howard stated when requested about refining her sport.
A lot of that refining she credit to the late Kentucky males’s basketball guard Terrence Clark, who died in a automobile accident final yr, a couple of months earlier than he would have been drafted into the NBA. She honored her ‘little brother’ at this yr’s draft with a pin that she wore containing his jersey quantity.
Howard will likely be becoming a member of a staff that misplaced its two main scorers in Courtney Williams and Chennedy Carter. Thus, she will likely be anticipated to come back in and be a serious contributor offensively. Even earlier than being drafted by the Dream, she was having conferences with them the place she “was simply proving to them why I imagine that I’m the precise match for them.”
For Howard, the chance to play for the staff that’s in the identical area that she grew up in is one which she could be very a lot trying ahead to. She is hoping that she reveals up and reveals out for town of Atlanta.
“It’s tremendous thrilling, and I’m pleased with what I’ve completed, pleased with myself, and grateful for everybody that’s been on this journey with me and that’s helped me to get right here,” Howard stated.
The entire room is quiet watching Rhyne’s interview on ESPN. They’re actually pumped as much as have her right here. #Dream HC Tanisha Wright may need been the loudest when noticed it over the printed. Fired up. https://t.co/WL5aJvLDSL
— Maria Martin (@Ria_Martin) April 11, 2022
