Women’s basketball stars Maya Moore and Seimone Augustus headline the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024. Here’s what you need to know:

• Rita Gail Easterling, Taj McWilliams-Franklin, Violet Palmer, Sue Phillips, and Roonie Scovel are also a part of the 2024 class.
• The Hall of Fame will also recognize Cheyney University as the recipient of the “Trailblazer of the Game” award. The “Lady Wolves” of Cheyney State College (now Cheyney University) is the only HBCU to have won a women’s or NCAA Division I basketball conference/Regional championship.
• The Afghan Resettlement Program, a group of 13 coaches and players from Afghanistan, will receive the “For the Love of the Game” award.
• The induction ceremony is on April 27, 2024.

CONGRATULATIONS to the WBHOF Class of 2024 Hall of Famers. Join us April 27th in Knoxville, TN to celebrate this class, the “Trailblazers of the Game” @cheyneyuniv, and the “For The Love of the Game” award recipients (Afghan Athlete Resettlement Program).

— WBHOF (@WBHOF) December 1, 2023

Who are the headliners of this class?

Moore and Augustus stand out. Certainly, Minnesota Lynx fans will be excited to see a duo of players who won four titles for the franchise being honored in this way, but Moore and Augustus have also made such huge contributions to college basketball, the WNBA writ large, international hoops and Team USA.

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Moore is one of just 10 players in women’s hoops history to have won a world championship, an Olympic gold, a WNBA title and an NCAA championship. At UConn, she won two national titles and was a four-time AP All-American as well as the unanimous national player of the year in 2009 and 2011. Minnesota picked her with the No. 1 pick in the 2011 WNBA Draft, and she played the entirety of her WNBA career with the Lynx. Moore was a six-time WNBA All-Star, the league MVP in 2014 and the Finals MVP in 2013.

Augustus led LSU to three consecutive Final Fours and won the Naismith, Wooden and Wade trophies in 2005 and 2006. In 2010, the Tigers retired her uniform (making her the first female athlete to receive the honor at LSU) and in January 2023, the university unveiled a statue of her in front of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. The Lynx drafted Augustus with the No. 1 pick in the 2006 WNBA Draft and she played 14 seasons with Minnesota before playing her final season with the LA Sparks in 2020. Augustus was an eight-time WNBA All-Star, a four-time WNBA champion and the 2011 WNBA Finals MVP. — Chantel Jennings, senior women’s basketball writer

Cheyney State receives Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame Acknowledgement at long last

It had been a years-long effort by a number of former Cheyney players and alumni to see the program commemorated in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. Cheyney finished as the runner-up at the 1982 women’s NCAA Division I tournament, the first time the competition had taken place. Despite lacking the monetary resources of some of its competition, it made the Final Four in 1984, making it still the only HBCU to ever reach that stage of the tournament.

Stringer, who had previously been inducted into both the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame and Naismith Hall of Fame, had actually been hired by Cheyney in 1971 not as its basketball coach, but instead as an assistant professor at the university. Yet it eventually became her first head coaching position, and she hired a staff that became the first trio of entirely Black women to compete in the women’s national championship game. Stringer also led her program at Cheyney at the same time another Naismith Hall of Fame coach, John Chaney, led the men’s program. Presently, only three universities — UConn, North Carolina and Cheyney — have had future Naismith Hall of Fame men’s and women’s basketball head coaches employed at the same time. — Ben Pickman, staff women’s basketball writer

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(Photo: Stacy Bengs / AP)