Ahead of the WNBA’s milestone 30th regular season, ESPN dropped its annual preseason ranking of the top 50 players in the league heading into the 2026 season. The Oregon Ducks have had a pair of former stars crack the list before, and now Sabrina Ionescu and Satou Sabally will play together once again after reuniting with the New York Liberty.
Ionescu moved up one spot from No. 7 last year to No. 6 in this year’s edition of the preseason top 50 rankings. While battling multiple injuries, the former Oregon superstar scored 18.2 points and 5.7 assists per game en route to her fourth All-Star nomination. She did post some of the worst shooting numbers of her career, connecting on just 40.1% of her shots from the field and a measly 29.9% from distance, but some of that could be attributed to the health struggles that forced her to miss some time.
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“Despite foot, toe and neck injuries that lingered all season and forced Ionescu to sit out six games, she equaled the career-high scoring average she posted during the Liberty’s 2024 championship run,” ESPN’s Charlie Creme wrote. “Though her 3-point shooting dipped below 30% for the first time in her career, Ionescu ranked seventh in the league in assists and first in free throw percentage (93.3%). Still one of the WNBA’s elite passers and now with a new three-year contract, a healthy Ionescu might have the ball in her hand initiating offense even more this season without Natasha Cloud beside her and in a new system of first-year coach Chris DeMarco.”
The Liberty did make it back to the postseason, but fell in the first round to the Phoenix Mercury, led by Sabally. Ionescu averaged 15.7 points per game in the series, but the superteam in the Big Apple, led by Breanna Stewart (No. 4 in the 2026 preseason rankings), couldn’t get it done.
Sabally crossed the country this offseason to sign with the Liberty, but she did fall a few spots in the rankings, dropping from No. 12 last year to No. 15 this season. In her lone season in Phoenix, Sabally continued to ascend among the best players in the league, averaging 16.3 points, 5.9 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game. She led the Mercury to the WNBA Finals, scoring 19 points per game in the playoffs, but she suffered a brutal concussion in Game 3 and missed the rest of the series as the Las Vegas Aces won the title in a sweep.
“Mercury fans are left to wonder if the results of last year’s Finals might have been different had Sabally not sustained a concussion late in Game 3 against the Aces,” Creme wrote. “The leading scorer for Phoenix in the postseason, Sabally sat out the final 4:35 of that two-point loss and then all of Game 4 as Las Vegas swept Phoenix. That turned out to be a one-and-done year in the desert. Instead of running it back with the Mercury, Sabally became one of the highest-ranked players to change teams in free agency. Her move to New York could alone swing the balance of power in the league from Las Vegas back to the 2024 champion Liberty.“
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Sabally’s decision to join the Liberty was the biggest move of the WNBA offseason and firmly puts the Liberty back in the driver’s seat to win another championship. That’s something that motivated Sabally’s move, as she cited “unfinished business” with Ionescu after the COVID-19 pandemic cut her time with Oregon and the triple-double phenom short and eliminated any chance of bringing a national championship home to Eugene in 2020.
Ionescu and Sabally will take the floor as teammates for the first time since 2020 when the Liberty begin the 2026 season against the Connecticut Sun on Friday, May 8, at the Barclays Center.
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This article originally appeared on Ducks Wire: ESPN ranks Sabrina Ionescu within top 10 of WNBA preseason rankings
