September 7, 2024
Locked On Women’s Basketball: How Tiffany Hayes went from polarizing prospect to all-time draft steal
By The Next
The former second-round pick is in her 12th season in the WNBA
In the latest episode of Locked On Women’s Basketball, Hunter Cruse, Em Adler and Lincoln Shafer continue their WNBA Retrospect series. This season of WNBA Retrospect focuses on players who were undervalued as pro prospects. Last week, the trio evaluated former Duke guard Jasmine Thomas, who fell to the No. 12 overall pick in the 2011 WNBA Draft.
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This week’s episode looks at former UConn guard Tiffany Hayes, the No. 14 pick in the 2012 draft. As a college senior, Hayes averaged 14.7 points, 5.8 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 2.3 steals in 30.2 minutes per game. Adler explains some of Hayes’ strengths as a prospect:
“She obviously has the best last step of anyone we have ever watched as as a prospect. It’s not even close. … Her body control through contact especially, her core stability in midair, the way that she decelerates, it’s all the best, basically, I’ve ever seen.”
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Much like scouts at the time, Adler, Cruse and Shafer don’t all agree on how strong of a prospect Hayes was at the end of her college career. They talk about their evaluations using grades on the 20-80 scale, and they give Hayes grades of between 50 and 60. Fifty means that the player is expected to develop into an average regular in the WNBA, while 60 means that the player is expected to be an above-average regular and occasional All-Star. Here’s Shafer explaining his grade for Hayes:
“I end up falling in between a 55 and a 60, which is going to just kind of depend on the shooting for me. It’s probably a 55 because I’m not necessarily bullish on the in-between game developing or hitting an above-average — like above 34%, 35% — number of spot-up threes. So it’s just going to be get to the rack, play some defense and hit a respectable amount of your spot-up threes.”
Hayes was drafted by the Atlanta Dream and played 10 seasons there. She played for the Connecticut Sun in 2023 and is now with the Las Vegas Aces. She was named an All-Star in 2017 and to the First Team All-WNBA in 2018.
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