The Indiana Fever’s offseason moves will be under the microscope once again this year, and one bold prediction has already turned heads. PFSN’s own Josh Weil has the Fever selecting one of college basketball’s most dominant big women — a player who has been quietly rewriting her own story with every game she plays.
Josh Weil Predicts Fever Select Madina Okot To Pair Alongside Caitlin Clark
Weil’s pick for Indiana is South Carolina center Madina Okot, a 6’6″ force of nature who has emerged as one of the most intriguing prospects in the 2026 WNBA Draft class. The reasoning is straightforward and compelling. With Caitlin Clark drawing the bulk of defensive attention on the perimeter, a dominant interior presence who can also stretch the floor would give opposing defenses an impossible problem to solve.
“With a revamped role and three-point shot, Okot has been extremely impressive this season, and there are very few women who measure up to Okot, let alone try to guard her,” Weil wrote.
“With Caitlin Clark hopefully healthy and drawing game-planning attention from opposing teams, the Fever could once again be among the top offenses. Defenses stretched between Clark and Okot would have no answer for the contrast of styles.”
It is a pairing that makes intuitive sense. Clark operates as one of the most dangerous floor generals in the game, capable of pulling defenders well beyond the arc and creating open looks for teammates at every level. Okot, at her size, presents a completely different kind of threat.
She’s a player who can punish teams in the paint while also stepping out to knock down threes. That combination of styles would be genuinely difficult to prepare for.
Okot and All the Buzz Around Her
Okot’s journey to this point is unlike almost anyone else in the draft conversation. She did not pick up basketball until her mid-teens in her native Kenya, and spent time competing collegiately there before landing at Mississippi State.
She then transferred to South Carolina this season under coach Dawn Staley. The learning curve has been steep by any measure, but the results have been extraordinary.
Through the 2025-26 season, Okot is averaging 13.8 points and 11.1 rebounds while shooting 58.2% from the field. She has recorded 21 double-doubles on the season, most recently in South Carolina’s 87-64 rout of Kentucky in the SEC Tournament. It was a game in which she dominated the interior while continuing to flash the new dimension that has the entire draft community re-evaluating exactly how high she should go.
That new dimension is the three-point shot — and it has genuinely caught people off guard. Okot did not attempt a single three-pointer during her time at Mississippi State, and her early months at South Carolina showed little indication that would change.
But since January, something has shifted. She is 10-for-20 from beyond the arc over that stretch and has taken at least one three in each of her last five games, including a 3-for-3 performance against Ole Miss that prompted Rebels coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin to say: “When she started looking like Steph Curry, I was like, we might as well pack it up.”
South Carolina has since begun running pick-and-pop sets specifically designed to get Okot looks from the perimeter. It’s a tactical evolution that speaks volumes about how much the coaching staff believes in what they are seeing.
Critically, the interior dominance has not faded one bit. Against Kentucky, she hauled down 13 rebounds while also defending the paint at the other end. The combination of rim protection, rebounding, and emerging floor spacing is precisely the profile WNBA front offices covet in a frontcourt player.
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Most mock drafts currently project Okot as a late first-round selection, though many analysts have noted that if teams fully buy into her three-point shooting as a sustainable skill, she could hear her name called considerably earlier.
Weil’s prediction places her in Indianapolis, and given what Clark’s supporting cast needs, it is a case that is very easy to make.
