Former Villanova star Lucy Olsen goes from Caitlin Clark successor to WNBA surprise

A lot of late-round picks don't make it to the league. But Olsen beat the odds with the Washington Mystics.

Lucy Olsen (33) in action with the Washington Mystics against the Las Vegas Aces earlier this month.Read moreSteve Marcus / AP

Published May 29, 2025, 12:00 p.m. ET

BALTIMORE — There was a point in time when Lucy Olsen wasn’t supposed to be here.

Then she was, then she wasn’t again, until she was once more. But things turned, until they turned back, only for …

OK, that probably confuses even people who know her story. So let’s put it this way, though it might take a while.

Olsen was a very good player at Spring-Ford High School — she was the school’s all-time leading scorer when she graduated and the 2021 Miss Pennsylvania Basketball award winner. But it wasn’t earth-shattering when the Collegeville native arrived at Villanova, just as it wasn’t when Maddy Siegrist arrived from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., three years earlier.

Together, they shattered quite a bit of earth. The Wildcats’ run to the Sweet 16 in 2023 was their first in 20 years, and they ended the season ranked No. 10 in the AP Top 25.

When Siegrist graduated, Olsen inherited the mantle, and WNBA scouts were watching. But while she was the nation’s No. 3 scorer as a junior, trailing only Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and Southern Cal’s JuJu Watkins, the season ended short of another NCAA bid.

At first, it seemed the only consolation prize would be a deep run in a lesser tournament. But a bigger one came after that: Iowa invited her to be Clark’s successor at point guard. (With a healthy NIL check attached, no doubt.)

Olsen said yes, but the season didn’t go as hoped. The Hawkeyes went 23-11, 10-8 in the Big Ten, which included a five-game losing streak in January.

Iowa reached the conference tournament quarterfinals, earned a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament, and fell in a second-round rout at No. 3 Oklahoma. Olsen finished the season with her second-best scoring average (17.9), her best assist average (5.1), and a place on the all-conference first team.

The scouts were still watching, but perhaps a bit less. Come the draft a few weeks later, Olsen was projected as on the bubble to be picked. She ended up going late in the second round to the Washington Mystics. Still, the journey was far from over.

Because WNBA rosters are just 12 players each, a lot of second- and third-round players don’t end up making it. And this year, Washington’s big draft class included three other guards: Notre Dame’s Sonia Citron, Kentucky’s Georgia Amoore, and Alabama’s Zaay Green.

Amoore suffered a torn ACL in an early-preseason practice, which lessened the competition. But a week later, the Mystics signed Creighton product Lauren Jensen.

At that point, Olsen could only do what she could do: keep working as hard as possible to prove she belonged. As the roster deadline approached, Mystics coach Sydney Johnson praised Olsen for doing exactly that. Would it be enough?

The final plot twist came two days before the season opener. Jensen was waived, and Olsen made it.

You were warned that the tale would take a while, but it’s worth telling all of it. She really did put in the work to get here.

“Draft night I was like, ‘OK, this is awesome. I got drafted,’” Olsen told The Inquirer. “And then it’s like, ‘Well, I have to make the team.’ So, I relaxed a little bit and took in the moment, but then I really had to get to work still.”

Once she officially made it, she said, “that’s when I was like, ‘OK, now you can play basketball again.’ Just enjoy it all because not everyone gets this opportunity, which makes it that much more special.”

Asked how the jump to the pros has been so far, she kept it simple.

“Everyone’s really good at basketball,” she said. “Everyone loves it. I think everyone’s super smart. Not just physically, but mentally. The game’s just at another level.”

That point was reinforced Wednesday night, as a young but fearless Washington squad beat the Indiana Fever, 83-77, in their first game since Clark’s headline-sweeping injury. Washington swarmed Indiana’s veterans defensively, and a fair few fans who showed up in Clark jerseys made early exits. Mystics fans, meanwhile, celebrated through the buzzer.

Olsen played a handful of minutes, as has been the case in most of her six games so far. But she played her part, hitting two big three-pointers in the third quarter. Her parents and some friends watched from the stands.

Before and after the game at Baltimore’s CFG Bank Arena, Olsen’s teammates had plenty of praise for her.

“Credit to her that when she gets in the game, she makes a difference,” veteran guard Brittney Sykes said. “She puts points on the table, she defends, she can handle the ball — there’s another ballhandler out there. It’s one of those things where, as a rookie, she understands her role, but she’s an amazing player. Any time we put her in a position where she’s on the floor, she succeeds in any way.”

Citron, who hasn’t taken long to show why she was this year’s No. 3 pick, said the way Olsen plays is “just infectious — you can tell that she really loves it, and I think that’s something very powerful. And definitely has a killer midrange [shot]. I know that for sure.”

Sykes also highlighted Olsen’s positivity.

“‘Lu’ stays ready,” she said. “She has a great attitude, positive attitude. Whether she touches the floor or not, she’s probably one of the first people coming out to the court to high-five you. First person when you get on that bench to tell you that you’re all right, keep going.”

Johnson, whom Philadelphia basketball fans might remember from playing and coaching at Princeton, praised Olsen for being a “rookie thrown into the fire” right after her college career ended.

“She’s a sponge. That’s the biggest thing about her,” he said. “She has the skill set, she’s got the midrange game, she’s stretching it out to three[-point range]. … But she’s as aggressive as anyone in terms of trying to get better and learn quickly, and that bodes well.”

Clark’s absence took away the storyline of Olsen playing against her. But that will come later. The teams meet twice in Indianapolis in the summer, and once more in Baltimore on Sept. 7. (Washington’s big downtown arena is being renovated this summer, so it isn’t available for games the Mystics want to move from their usual 4,200-seat home.)

“Hopefully, we’ll be on the court at the same time. That’ll be fun,” Olsen said. “But she’s a great player. Just seeing her out on the court, and watching her play, playing against her, it’ll be a really cool opportunity.”

For now, Olsen is news on her own.