Stanford grads Chiney Ogwumike and Nneka Ogwumike have been selected to the WNBA All-Star Game following a vote of fans, fellow WNBA players, head coaches and media.
Elena Delle Donne and Candace Parker will serve as team captains and draft the rosters for the 15th version of the event, which will take place on Saturday, July 28 at Target Center in Minneapolis. ABC will televise the game live at 12:30 p.m.
An All-Star as a rookie in 2014, Chiney earned her second selection after missing two of the previous three seasons due to injury. She has started all 21 games for the Connecticut Sun and is averaging a team-high 15.0 points and 7.5 rebounds. Her .603 field goal percentage is second in the league.
Nneka, the 2016 WNBA MVP, has been selected to every All-Star game played during her career and will be making her fifth appearance in the showcase. The elder Ogwumike leads the Los Angeles Sparks in rebounding (7.4) and field goal percentage (.549) and is second in scoring (16.1).
The Ogwumike’s, who first appeared as All-Stars together in 2014, are the only siblings to play in the WNBA All-Star Game.
For the first time, All-Stars were selected without regard for conference affiliation. Fans accounted for 40 percent of the vote, while current players, current head coaches and a media panel accounted for 20 percent each. The All-Stars were announced Tuesday on ESPN’s SportsCenter.
Under an updated All-Star Game format that replaces the traditional match-up between conferences, Delle Donne and Parker will select their respective teams from the pool of All-Stars to form two 11-player rosters, which will be revealed on Thursday at the start of ESPN2’s telecast of a game between Washington and the Dallas Wings.
Women’s tennis
Stanford sophomore Michaela Gordon was forced to retire in the third set of her qualifying match with Pamela Montez at the $60,000 Berkeley Tennis Club Challenger with an undisclosed health issue on Tuesday.
Montez was leading, 4-6, 6-3, 4-3, when Gordon called for the trainer and ultimately retired. Montez advanced into the main draw and will face Russia’s Chanel Simmonds in the main draw.
In the doubles main draw, Stanford grad Nicole Gibbs and teammate Asia Muhammad slipped past Australia’s Kimberly Birrell and Japan’s Misaki Doi, 6-3, 7-5, to advance into the second round where they will face third-seeded Manon Arcangioli of France and Tara Moore of Great Britain.
Stanford alum Kristie Ahn and her teammate Emina Bektas fell, 6-4, 2-6 (10-6) to Americans Julia Elbaba and Catherine Harrison.
Ahn will be playing Colombia’s Emiliana Arango in a first-round singles match on Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. in Berkeley. The second-seeded Gibbs is scheduled to play Serbia’s Jovana Jaksic at approximately 2 p.m.
By Palo Alto Online Sports/Stanford Athletics
By Palo Alto Online Sports/Stanford Athletics
By Palo Alto Online Sports/Stanford Athletics