Only about a dozen of the top 50 women’s basketball prospects from the Class of 2027 have committed to a college program, with official visits and commitment chatter starting to heat up.
And UConn, with 12 national championships to its credit, can recruit the best players with the best of them.
Advertisement
Per industry reports, head coach Geno Auriemma has offers out to the top three players as ranked by the 247Sports composite.
They also are the No. 1-ranked players at their positions: point guard Kaleena Smith from Ontario (Calif.) Christian, small forward Ivanna Wilson-Manyacka of The Bullis School in Potomac, Md., and Haylen Ayers, a shooting guard who plays at the University School of Jackson in Tennessee.
Ayers spoke to Talia Goodman of On3 recently and shared her impressions of UConn and the other schools she is considering: Texas, Vanderbilt and Kentucky of the Southeastern Conference, and Duke of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Advertisement
Ayers, a 6-footer, said she will choose the program and school where she thinks she fits in the best, the level of communication and the relationships she can build.
This is what she told Goodman about her thoughts on UConn:
“They’re really good people over there. Obviously, that’s a known school that has a standard and their name is out there,” Ayers said. “I think for me it’s the relationship that I have with them that a lot of people probably wouldn’t expect. It’s a staff that’s been there a while and they still know how to communicate and how to talk to people.”
What has she learned about life in the Basketball Capital of the World?
Advertisement
“When I was on campus, it’s just the standard for them to not have phones. That really stood out to me. Just the small intangibles that a lot of this generation doesn’t understand, and that’s something that my mom has taught me, and that’s something that I could live out there.”
We’re not positive, but Haylen Ayers and her mom could be the only mother-daughter tandem to accomplish this: win Gatorade Girls Basketball Player of the Year. Haylen won the award for Tennessee in 2025, repeating what her mother, also a guard, did in 1999.
Her mom, then known as Ashley McElhiney, went on to play at Vanderbilt (1999-2003) and was selected by the Indiana Fever in the third round of the 2003 WNBA Draft but never played in the league.
Advertisement
In 2004, McElhiney became the first female head coach of a male professional basketball team. She was just 22 when she was named in 2004 as the head coach of the Nashville Rhythm of the American Basketball Association, a professional developmental league.
Now known as Ashley McElhiney Ayers, she continues coaching in Tennessee. As a Vanderbilt alum, she could try to steer her daughter in that direction.
Remember to join our UCONN on ROUNDTABLE community, which is FREE! You can post your own thoughts, in text or video form, and you can engage with our Roundtable staff, as well as other Huskies fans. If prompted to download the Roundtable APP, that’s free too!
