WBB: The Last Dance is Here; Welcome to the 2025-2026 Season
Losing seven teams in four years has put the WAC into the position we're in today, with 2025-2026 being the last season of competition under that banner...
When former WAC commissioner Jeff Hurd announced the additions of SFA, Sam Houston State, New Mexico State, Lamar, UIW, and ACU as members in January 2021, along with Southern Utah in 2022, who would have thought that four years later the conference would be dissolving?
That’s exactly what happens when the curtain closes on WAC tournament play at Orleans Arena on March 14, 2026.
It started with UIW backing out of their agreement to join the WAC and remain in the Southland Conference.
Then Lamar left at the end of the 2021-2022 academic year to also go back to the Southland Conference.
New Mexico State and Sam Houston State left for CUSA after the 2022-2023 school year, finding homes for their football programs that have FBS ambitions.
At the end of the 2023-2024 academic year, both SFA and UTRGV went to the Southland Conference.
And on July 1, the departures of GCU and Seattle U became final. GCU entered the Mountain West while the Redhawks went to the WCC.
With no regional prospects who wanted to initiate the Division II to Division I transition or active Division I’s who wanted to change conferences, WAC officials were forced to merge the remaining three programs with five ASUN football schools and go on under the UAC banner for 2026.
CBU and Utah Valley announced earlier this spring that they’d be leaving the WAC for the Big West as of July 1, 2026. That move was the nail in the WAC’s coffin as a conference must have seven active members to have NCAA tournament qualifier status, and starting a rebuild at three was deemed impossible.
For those unfamiliar, the United Athletic Conference is the WAC’s Football Championship Subdivision-affiliated conference.
That move sadly marks the end of a conference history that dates back to the John F. Kennedy administration. It also leaves us with just seven teams for 2025-2026, excluding our defending women’s basketball champion, the Lopes.
GCU won the regular season by six games last year, and this year’s race promises to be a lot tighter than that.
Four of this year’s seven teams reached the WNIT in ACU, UT Arlington, Tarleton State, and Utah Valley.
For the Lady Mavs and Texans, the question is how good of a job they did recruiting-wise this offseason? Both graduated a bulk of their scoring and minutes played from last year’s teams.
ACU returns the core of last year’s team, only graduating all-WAC First and Defensive team selection Bella Earle, along with Zoe Jackson. Can the Wildcats stay healthy is the big question.
Payton Hull missed nearly half the year after getting hurt in a mid-January loss against GCU. If she can stay on the floor, she’s a Player of the Year candidate. Can Erin Woodson make the leap from fill-in starter to full-time starter and sustain the momentum she picked up while filling in for Hull?
Utah Valley also had its best season in the Division I era a season ago as the Wolverines won a game in WNIT play and pushed Washington State before falling. Dan Nielson also returns much of his core from last year, led by Amanda Barcello, who shot just over 46 percent from 3-point range (55 of 119). How well the Wolverines do in replacing the scoring of Tahlia White, rebounding of Danja Stafford-Collins, and Ally Criddle’s 111 assists will determine how they follow up last year’s success.
UT Arlington doesn’t return a ton in terms of starting minutes or points, but it returns experience in Shereka Wright’s program.
Who steps up from that group to fill the void? Kendal Robinson, an All-WAC Freshman Team selection, returns for her sophomore year, as does senior Nya Threatt. Laura Bello, an All-Big Sky Honorable Mention post player while at Idaho State, also joins the Lady Mavs fold after missing last year due to an injury. Wright added the Reynolds sisters (Amiyah, Mila, and Kira), two of whom have spent time on power conference rosters, and the third had Indiana’s first HS quintuple-double last year.
Jakoriah Long, an all-WAC second team selection, is Bill Brock’s only returning starter from last year at Tarleton State. Brock went and gained some WAC experience in the portal with Gia Adams (WAC Newcomer of the Year 2024), who transferred over from North Texas, where she did not play a game for the Mean Green.
He also added one of the MAAC’s top shot blockers in Mount St. Mary’s transfer Tessa Engelman. The question in Stephenville, where the Texans also break in a new arena, is how a roster with one returning starter, a pair of returning reserves, and heavy reliance on the portal can follow up the best DI season in program history?
At Utah Tech, the Trailblazers, who struggled to a 1-15 WAC regular season mark a year ago while Maddie and Macie Warren were recovering from knee injuries, get the twins back.
Emily Chamberlain (Isaacson) had a year of eligibility left but chose to move on and join head coach JD Gustin’s staff as an assistant. She finished first in both career made 3-pointers and percentage, along with third in career scoring, while adding top-five finishes in four other categories. Still, Gustin has his core back from last year, led by Chardonay Hartley (top ten nationally in assists) and Ellie Taylor (all-WAC Freshman team selection).
In Riverside, Jarrod Olson gets Khloe Lemon, Grace Schmidt, and Filippa Barros back from CBU’s 2024 NCAA Tournament team. Two questions for CBU…what kind of strides do WAC Freshman of the Year CeCe Legaspi and Emma Johansson make in year two, and can the Lancers stay healthy? Lemon missed the non-conference portion of last year before returning to earn all-WAC second team honors, and Barros missed all but two games battling a foot injury. Johansson was the only Lancer to appear in all 31 games a year ago.
Tracy Mason loses four of her top five scorers from a year ago and 103 combined starts at Southern Utah. She does return Ava Uhrich, who finished with six of her last ten games in double-digit scoring, including a career-high 27 points against DI competition against CBU. The T-Birds have seven other returners, including Indonesian National Team selection Bella Hasan, but that group has combined for only two starts between them. For Southern Utah, it’s a matter of how quickly a young group of returners and rookies gets up to speed behind their lone returning starter.
From Straight Outta WAC After Hours shows, to interviews with your favorite coaches, broadcasters, and players, and everything in between, join us as we cover the final #RoadtoWACVegas, which begins in just under 100 days.