The Los Angeles Sparks were the happiest team coming out of the WNBA draft lottery, winning the first overall pick.  Chicago Sky, who had just a 9.7% chance, managed to win the 2nd pick, while the Minnesota Lynx took third.  New franchise Atlanta took fourth, followed by Houston Comets, Washington Mystics, New York Liberty, Seattle Storm, Connecticut Sun, Sacramento Monarchs, Detroit Shock, Indiana Fever and Phoenix Mercury.

Chicago Sky have already talked about potential picks, which include University of Tennessee star Candace Parker, Louisana States top center Sylvia Fowles and Candice Wiggins, who plays guard for Stanford.  The most interesting one of those players is Candace Parker, an all-american and one of the best players to enter this sport, and surely the #1 pick.

Indiana Fever have announced they shall not retain coach Brian Winters.  Winters led the Fever to one victory away from the WNBA finals this season.  Indiana join Phoenix and Atlanta in the search for new coaches.  Hopefully Winters stays in the game, because he did a great job at Fever despite the loss of star player Tamika catchings.

As we mentioned in the last update - Atlanta was hot on the heels of getting a WNBA franchise, and we’re glad to announce that it’s all confirmed!  Ron Terwilliger, a real estate executive, will be the sole owner of the franchise, bringing womens basketball back to Atlanta after nine years without it.  Un-named as of yet, Terwilliger laid out his long term plans, that include being a winning team by the third season, a playoff team by the fourth season, and a championship team by season 6, in 2014.  Atlanta will be a member of the Eastern Conference, which currently also hosts Chicago, Detroit, New York, Washington, Indiana and Connecticut.

To continue the big news, the WNBA also announced that it will be holding it’s draft lottery next week, on Tuesday October 23rd.  While the LA Sparks get the #1 pick, when the early lines come out next season, I’d be looking at the Minnesota Lynx as a good long-shot bet.  They have the #2 pick, and gained the #1 picks over the last two years, Seimone Augustus and Lindsay Harding.  This #2 pick will bolster their ever-improving team, and I expect to see them make a challenge next season.  The lottery will take place in New York City.

WNBA Legend Theresa Weatherspoon, who played for the New York Liberty for three seasons and won an Olympic Gold Medal, was named head coach of the Westchester Phantoms.  Sportscentral has the full story.

Katie Feenstra, who plays center for the Detroit Shock, was given quite a shock when she was given a call up for the USA Basketball Select Team!  You can read all about it on WNBA.com.

Liberty Point guard Loree Moore and her team-mate Janel McCarville were also given call ups.  The USA basketball team will be participating in the FIBA World League Tournament, which takes place in Russia next week.

It is looking more and more likely that Atlanta will have a WNBA franchise in the 2008 season.  We should have more on this in the coming days.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to give a status update on the site.  After our last picks, I had a problem with the bot in that the database that was storing the data became corrupt.  While I had an earlier backup, I didn’t have the time to rebuild it all.  With the playoffs being fairly tight anyway, I wasn’t too comfortable relying on the bot, and so decided to  just call it quits for the season.  I kept meaning to post a notice about this, but never had time.

With the WNBA season over, I’ve been playing around with the bot, reading a lot of literature, and trying to tweak it for the NBA season.  I’m fairly confident that we can have a winning season in the NBA like we did in the WNBA, and so will be doing bot picks again when the NBA season starts - although it will be a few weeks into the season before I really start the picks.  I will be creating a separate website for the NBA tips, and once I get that launched I will let you all know.

In the meantime, I will be posting WNBA related news here on the site during the off-season.  As I know everyone on the mailing list is probably here just for the tips, I will disband the mailing list until the season starts up again.

When I first started botting the WNBA, it was on a trial period to see if this is something I could actually have some sort of success at.  Any sort of success for this season I would have been happy with, and I’m ecstatic that we had a winning season.  The original system we used went 35-25 for a 58.3% winning percentage, and the new system went 33-22, for a 60% winning percentage, results that I am just ecstatic with.

Thanks to everyone for supporting and following the system - it’s much appreciated, and really kept me going.  The NBA season is upon us, so let’s hit a 60% winning percentage for that too!