WBB: Badgers nab first player out of the transfer portal on Saturday
Former N.C. State guard Laci Steele will be heading to Madison to play next year.
New Wisconsin Badgers women’s basketball head coach Robin Pingeton noted during her opening press conference in Madison that she is not a particularly patient person. Well, her impatience led her to contact myriad players in the transfer portal before her first presser and now she has her first commitment as UW’s head woman.
On Saturday afternoon, 5-foot-11 guard Laci Steele announced her commitment to Wisconsin on her various social media accounts. Steele played her first two seasons with the N.C. State Wolfpack.
Laci Steele Fast Facts
Height: 5-foot-11
Position: guard
Eligibility: two years remaining
Previous School: N.C. State
Hometown: Edmond, Okla.
Recruiting Highlights: ranked No. 56 overall in 2023 class by ESPN; 2023 Oklahoma AAU Player of the Year, Oklahoma Gatorade Player of the Year, and Oklahoma MaxPreps Player of the Year
Laci Steele Fast Stats
Career College Stats
52 games (zero starts)
PPG: 2.6
RPG: 1.0
APG: 0.4
SPG: 0.4
BPG: 0.1
TOPG: 0.4
FG: 50-of-150 (33.3%)
3P: 29-of-93 (31.2%)
FT: 18-of-23 (78.3%)
Laci Steele Scouting Report
A 30,000 foot view comparison if you don’t want to read more than one sentence? Tess Myers with better defense. But you don’t subscribe to a niche women’s basketball newsletter for that! You want to get in the weeds!
While coming into college Steele may have been described as a “combo guard” I think she has pretty well settled in to the role of “wing guard” or “shooting guard” if you are into more traditional positional designations.
She has a career three-point rate of 59.4% and has scored 62.4% of her career points from beyond the arc. Her turnover rate is extremely low and she doesn’t have a particularly high usage either. When watching the highlights posted by the N.C. State WBB account most of her shots were of the “spot-up three” variety and when double-checking the numbers I found that 100% of her threes were assisted this season.
I saw some random comments on Twitter that said Steele wasn’t a good defender but her stats suggest otherwise. Her career steal rate is 2.3% and her defensive only box plus/minus is +3.3. She isn’t a great defensive rebounder, but she is adequate, especially at her position.
While looking at the invaluable Hoop-Explorer I noticed a few interesting trends. First up, here are who Steele played with most often in 2024-25. Steele’s main lineup-mates this past season were:
Maddie Cox, 6-foot-2, soph.: 47.2% of the time
Devyn Quigley, 5-foot-11, fresh.: 46.8%
Their PORPAGATU! (points over replacement per adjusted game at that usage) and BPM (box plus/minus) rates were:
Maddie Cox: -0.2 (12th on team); 1.8 (10th)
Devyn Quigley: 1.1 (7th); 5.1 (6th)
Laci Steele: 0.3 (10th); 3.1 (8th)
While that shows Steele got run with mainly other end-of-the-bench type players, she also played with the starters around 40% of her time on the court.
One of the other, somewhat odd, things I noticed was that when Steele was on the court the Wolfpack were incredibly efficient in transition opportunities. Their adjusted efficiency on these types of play was 1.48 points per play, which was in the 100th percentile nationally. However, they didn’t get out and run much as they only did so on 13.4 percent of plays (13th percentile).
In my deep dive of Pingeton’s offensive tendencies over the past four seasons, I noted that Mizzou played a somewhat similar style:
the past two seasons, the Tigers got out and ran a bit (41.4%ile this year; 66%ile last year) and were exceedingly efficient, averaging 1.33 points per play on the fast break both years.
Pingeton’s teams have also been excellent at long-range bombing in the last four years, shooting:
2024-25: 16th, 36.6%
2023-24: 30th, 35.5%
2022-23: 31st, 35.3%
2021-22: 4th, 38.4%
She has more seasons where her teams finished in the top-10 (three times) of three-point percentage than below 100th (twice). The only problem? Pingeton’s teams don’t shoot ENOUGH threes. MU’s three-point rate of 29.6% last year was 185th in the country. While the three years before that were better for three-point rate, only one of them rated in the top-50 nationally and it was 50th. I hope Lily Krahn’s shooting arm is ready for a workout next season!
Steele could find a pretty nice role in Madison as a three-point shooter who also plays above average (hopefully!) defense on their opponent’s sniper.
Finally, and not for nothing, but after two years with the Wolfpack, Steele brings a wealth of NCAA Tournament experience to Madison. This past year N.C. State made the Sweet 16 and the year before that they went all the way to the Final Four. Did Steele have a huge hand in those postseason runs? Well, no, she only played 25 minutes combined but that’s not really the point.
Those 25 minutes are actually ::does complicated math in head:: 25 more minutes than everyone on Wisconsin’s roster combined last season. At absolute worst, Steele will bring an expectation of winning and playing deep into March with her and every little bit of that will slowly help change the culture at UW. Hoping to win and expecting to win are two wildly different mindsets and a shift there will help the Badgers get back to the NCAA Tournament sooner rather than later.
Wisconsin still has plenty of spots to fill on their roster for next year, but getting Steele on board is a really nice first step in Pingeton’s first off-season in charge.
I welcome any player that will reduce the turnover rate. I keep my expectations low.