Former Minnesota Lynx championship teammates Lindsay Whalen and Taj McWilliams-Franklin, two-time WNBA title-winning coach Brian Agler and ESPN analyst Carolyn Peck, the first Black head coach to win the NCAA women's basketball tournament, are among 12 finalists for 2023 induction into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.
Which finalists will be inductees will be announced during halftime of ABC's broadcast of the Phil Knight Legacy tournament women's championship game at 1 p.m. ET on Nov. 27. The induction will be April 29 at the hall in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Whalen, who was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, in September, led the Minnesota Gophers to the 2004 women's Final Four and is now head women's basketball coach at her alma mater. She won two Olympic gold medals with Team USA. She played alongside McWilliams-Franklin when the Lynx won the first of their four WNBA titles in 2011, all of which Whalen was apart of, and they were also teammates on the Connecticut Sun's 2004 and 2005 WNBA Finals teams. McWilliams-Franklin also won a title with the 2008 Detroit Shock.
Agler coached the Columbus Quest to two ABL titles and then won WNBA titles with the Seattle Storm and Los Angeles Sparks.
Peck led the Purdue Boilermakers to the 1999 NCAA title, a breakthrough achievement for Black head coaches in the women's game. Peck, who played collegiately for the Vanderbilt Commodores, also has been a head coach in the WNBA and for the Florida Gators, along with being a collegiate assistant for the Tennessee Lady Volunteers, Kentucky Wildcats, Purdue and her alma mater.
The other finalists include Illinois State Redbirds standout and 1984 Olympic gold medalist Cathy Boswell, two-time NCAA champion Paula McGee of the USC Trojans, WNBA forward Crystal Robinson and Georgia Bulldogs standout Saudia Roundtree.
The other coaches who are finalists are Sue Phillips of high school powerhouse Archbishop Mitty in California, and six-time junior college national champion Mary "Roonie" Scovel of Gulf Coast State College in Florida.
Former Texas Longhorns women's athletic director Donna Lopiano and longtime collegiate and WNBA referee Lisa Mattingly are also finalists.