- Ameshya Williams-Holliday became the first HBCU player drafted by a WNBA team in two decades.
- The Indiana Fever chose the Jackson State Tigers superstar with the first pick of the third round.
- The center averaged 19.2 points and 11.4 boards per game en route to SWAC Player of the Year honors.
Ameshya Williams-Holliday is WNBA bound.
The Jackson State Tigers superstar and Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) Player of the Year became the first player from a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) drafted into the WNBA in two decades. The Indiana Fever selected the 6-foot-4 center with the first pick of the third round of the 2022 WNBA Draft Monday night.
Williams-Holliday was just five years old the last time an HBCU star was drafted into the league.
"I'm just grateful and thankful," Williams-Holliday told reporters in a post-draft press conference via Zoom. "I'm really lost for words. I don't know what to say. It's just unbelievable to me."
Williams-Holliday was a standout for the Tigers ever since she joined head coach Tomekia Reed's program in 2019. This season, she averaged 19.2 points and 11.4 boards per game en route to SWAC Player of the Year honors, but she was a consistent first-team All-SWAC selection and earned conference Defensive Player of the Year honors in each of her three seasons competing for Jackson State.
Her 16.1 points, 11.2 rebounds, and 2.9 blocks per game over that span helped lead the Tigers to 60 wins and two NCAA Tournament appearances. Williams-Holliday recorded double-doubles in both March Madness showings — against Baylor in 2021 and LSU in 2022 — and very nearly led Jackson State to a historic upset of Kim Mulkey's Tigers in this year's first-round bout.
"Since day one, when she stepped foot on Jackson State campus, she has just been phenomenal for our program," Reed said of Williams-Holliday. "She has made history year after year after year, game after game, she has made history. And to get drafted as high as she did today, she's continuing to blaze trails. She's continuing to make history. And I am just one proud coach."
But perhaps the most important achievement of Williams-Holliday's three-year Tigers tenure was rekindling her love of basketball. Immediately after high school, the Gulfport, Mississippi, native joined Vic Schaefer's Mississippi State Bulldogs. But as detailed in Rashad Milligan's 2020 piece for the Mississippi Clarion Ledger, Williams-Holliday decided she was done after two seasons of high-intensity SEC hoops.
She left the team, dropped out of school, and swore that she was done with basketball. Reed recruited her anyway and promised to pay Williams-Holliday's way through Jackson State regardless of whether or not she ever suited up for the Tigers.
When Williams-Holliday told the coach she was pregnant, Reed stayed the course. She enrolled at JSU in the summer of 2018 — six months before she gave birth to her son and a year and a half before she returned to the court.
"I'm just happy I went back to school and changed my life around," Williams-Holliday said. "[Coach Reed is] the reason, and she just pushed me a lot."
Now that she's been drafted, Williams-Holliday faces an uphill battle in vying for one of the highly coveted WNBA roster spots. Since 1997, a whopping 42% of players drafted by WNBA teams did not make a final roster.
But Williams-Holliday has achieved the seemingly impossible before. She rediscovered her love of basketball after swearing off the sport for good. She found her way back to the court a year after giving birth to her first child. And she heard her name called after 19 consecutive WNBA drafts without a single HBCU player picked.
"It means a lot to me," Williams-Holliday said Monday. "I'm just glad I kept making history, going to keep making history, and the people that's coming behind me, just keep going. Anything is possible."