Ohio State guard Celeste Taylor has been selected in the second round (No. 15 overall) of the 2024 WNBA Draft by the Indiana Fever following her illustrious college career.
Earlier in the night, the Fever selected Iowa’s Caitlin Clark with the No. 1 pick. Now both guards will team up after squaring off in the Big Ten.
Before becoming a pro, Taylor played the 2023-24 season at Ohio State, where she helped the Buckeyes to a Big Ten regular season championship alongside other star players Jacy Sheldon, Cotie McMahon and Taylor Thierry. OSU also won a couple of games in the NCAA Tournament but ultimately fell in the Sweet 16.
Prior to her fifth and final year with the Buckeyes, Taylor had previously split her years at Texas and Duke. She attended Texas out of high school and started 26 of 30 games as a true freshman, averaging 9.3 points.
That would be the lowest mark of her career as Taylor scored in double figures every other season, starting with her sophomore year at Texas in 2021-22, when Taylor’s scoring average peaked at 12.3 points, although she shot just 35% from the field.
In 2022-23, Taylor moved on to Duke and averaged 11 points per game for two straight seasons, both featuring stronger shooting numbers than the years prior. In 2024, it was on to Ohio State, where Taylor only averaged 10.1 points per game but did so on a good team with strong shooting numbers.
There’s also the defensive aspect of Taylor, perhaps the main reason why she’s been drafted. Taylor won the 2022-23 ACC Defensive Player of the Award and the 2023-24 Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year award, averaging 2.2 and 2.5 steals per game in each of the seasons.
During that 2022-23 season at Duke, Taylor produced a stat line in one game that hadn’t been seen in over 20 years, a quadruple-eight, where she recorded eight points, eight assists, 10 rebounds and 10 steals against Colorado — and no women’s player had recorded 8+ in each of those statistics in a single game since at least the year 2000.
Taylor was certainly a veteran of the college game and departs after playing 146 total games. Even crazier, she started a whopping 139 of those, including 77 out of a possible 78 over her final three seasons. Her new team is getting a dependable player, plus a winner and a great defender. Taylor may never be a superstar, but she can be what she’s always been, a perfect secondary player and elite defensive presence on any team in the league.
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