Welcome (back) to the Starting Five, your rundown of the key stories in #HLWBB since the last Starting Five post.
1. Lady of Spain
The podium at the recently-concluded 2024 Summer Olympics had a Horizon League basketball presence, thanks to former Robert Morris Colonial Vega Gimeno. Okay, Gimeno actually played in the NEC while at RMU during the 2009-10 season, but if the Big Ten’s out there claiming Kelsey Plum and Sabrina Ionescu, I’m just going to go for it.
Anyway, Gimeno was a member of Spain’s 3×3 team that claimed a silver medal in Paris after falling to Germany in the final by a 17-16 count (for those unfamiliar, 3×3 games are just 10:00 long and baskets count for one and two points instead of two and three). The signature Spanish effort came in the contest before that though, an 18-16 overtime semifinal victory against Team USA – which featured the likes of Hailey Van Lith, Rhyne Howard, Cierra Burdick and Dearica Hamby – that saw Gimeno contribute four points and six rebounds to the outcome. In all, she averaged 5.1 points and 3.7 rebounds across the two medal-round games and five others during pool play.
Gimeno was only at RMU for one year, though she made it count, with a spot on the NEC All-Rookie Team and 10.3 points per game for a Colonials squad that went 23-9 overall and qualified for the WNIT. She then returned to her home country and enjoyed a long professional career in the top-tier Liga Femenina de Baloncesto, while also competing internationally in both the three and five-player versions of the sport, though the 33-year-old has announced her retirement effective with the end of the Olympic tournament.
The HL also had a connection to the 3×3 men’s tournament, albeit an indirect one: Joe Lewandowski, the father of Youngstown State point guard Dacia, was the head coach of the U.S. squad. However, the red, white and blue failed to qualify for the knockout rounds after a 2-5 mark during the pool stage.
2. Queen of the Supermarket
One person who, quite contentiously, was not at the Olympics was Caitlin Clark. Where was the Indiana Fever superstar instead? Apparently, a central Indiana Kroger, which is just like Paris in a sense, since I assume that they have grocery stores in Paris.
More to the point of why I’m talking about it, so were IU Indianapolis players Nevaeh Foster and Destini Craig. The pair took advantage of a shared need for peanut butter and grabbed photos with Clark to commemorate the chance meeting, though the all-time leading scorer in college basketball history was somewhat less enthusiastic about the occasion than the Jags. To be fair, Clark probably didn’t expect to be in a viral photo 45 minutes after throwing on her Kobe Bryant Tough Shit hoodie to slog to the store for some Greek yogurt and chicken breasts, but she was still nice enough to oblige.
Given Clark’s stature in the basketball world, it’s probably a fair play, even if most of the top replies to the photos were along the lines of “sheesh, leave her alone.” If nothing else, bumping into a WNBA player in real life is an opportunity unique to IU Indy within the Horizon League, given that Chicago no longer has a presence in the conference while teams like the Cleveland Rockers and Detroit Shock mostly exist on Wikipedia these days.
While at Iowa, it must be mentioned, Clark went 0-1 against the Jaguars, as the team then known as IUPUI rallied from a 54-36 deficit midway through the third quarter on December 21, 2021 in Iowa City. Rachel McLimore scored 19 points that afternoon, including the decisive free throws with three seconds remaining. She also carried the bulk of the defensive responsibility for Clark, who was held to a (relatively) harmless 19 points on 6-for-16 shooting.
3. HOT TO GO!
Wright State has always been the conference leader in selling off cool stuff (in fact, almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a Starting Five entry about their sale of the Nutter Center’s old courtside chairs), and they’ve now made that a full-time part of their website with the snazzily-titled Wright State Athletics Auctions.
The only women’s basketball item included as part of the initial offering is one of the Raiders’ pink game-worn jerseys, with number 30 on it. Catalina Ion was the most recent player to wear 30 for WSU, however, she wore a 32 jersey in the Raiders’ 2023-24 pink game – the school has been recycling their pink jerseys for a while, making sizing and number availability an issue as the roster turns over. Most likely, the top was worn by the previous Wright State 30, Channing Chappell, a Horizon League champion as a freshman in 2020-21 who played three seasons in Dayton before moving on to Division II Lynn University last year.
If you’re not interested in Chappell and are maybe holding out for a Kacee Baumhower or a Rachel Loobie, there’s a pretty decent chance you’ll get lucky with a bit of patience.
4. Love for Sale
A compelling story popped up at UConn last week, when beauty brand Madison Reed (helmed by a UConn-graduate founder and CEO) signed on for a “wide-ranging partnership” with the school. Most visibly, Madison Reed will own court-naming rights at Gampel Pavilion and the XL Center for the next three years as part of what’s reportedly a multi-million dollar deal.
That’s not news, sponsorships happen literally all the time. What’s novel here is that the deal also includes NIL arrangements and career opportunities for Huskies players. In fact, UConn stars Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd, Ice Brady and Morgan Cheli have already started shilling for Madison Reed, and have agreed to wear the company’s hair coloring products throughout the life of the agreement.
With universities now permitted more direct involved with NIL, while also desperately clawing for every loose cent they can find for themselves while bracing for the long-term implications of the House settlement, it seems like the deal is a pretty solid win for all involved.
Which brings us back to the Horizon League. Obviously, nobody in the HL has the clout of a UConn or a Paige Bueckers, but for a league that loves to tout its #MajorCities, one can’t help but think that there’s some sort of opportunity within the conference that might not exist in, say, the Ohio Valley Conference. Major cities have major businesses after all, and it shouldn’t be hard to find the sort of mutually-beneficial arrangement that wasn’t possible mere months ago, even if the scale isn’t the same as it is for college basketball’s premier brands.
5. Hey, Soul Sister
Green Bay and Milwaukee are an hour earlier than the rest of the Horizon League when considering time zones, but they’re a few months earlier when it comes to recruiting. In fact, there are only a dozen 2026 Division I commitments listed on WBB Blog as of this writing, and two are Green Bay-bound twins Ady and Riley Ketterhagen. The Phoenix’s I-43 rivals joined that short list on August 5th when 5-7 combo guard Kylie Butler committed to Milwaukee.
Here’s the truly fun part about that: Butler’s older sister is Bailey Butler, Green Bay’s All-HL point guard. Incidentally, Kylie did hold a GB offer, though the age difference between the siblings canceled out any sort of advantage the relationship might have given the northerners.
Anyway, Brandon Bradley from Prep Girls Hoops had this to say about Butler following a showcase viewing a couple months ago:
“Kylie was very good Sunday morning, as she was scoring the basketball consistently in all different ways. She knocked down open jumpers from the perimeter, she flashed to the mid-post and scored, and she was able to attack the basket and score inside or draw free throw opportunities. She is a really nice athlete with a strong handle, she showed the ability to change directions in traffic and absorb contact, plus she brought great energy. Kylie also made a few plays at the defensive end, using her length to get her hands on some deflections/steals.”
Those scouting reports rarely say anything negative, particularly when talking about DI-caliber players, but nevertheless, Butler averaged 22.4 points per game as a sophomore and was named to the all-state team at the Division 5 level after leading Argyle-Pecatonica to the state semifinals. It’s pretty hard to argue with any of that, or with her genetics.
