Meg Bulger not coming to Sacramento...oops!

[mitzukosan]

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Women's Basketball: Bulger Staying at WVU​

By Phil Caskey for MSNsportsNET.com
April 5, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Senior guard Meg Bulger is not leaving the West Virginia University women’s basketball program despite being drafted by the WNBA’s Sacramento Monarchs in yesterday’s league draft.
Bulger, a 6-0 guard and native of Pittsburgh, Pa., has one year of eligibility remaining and will use that to join her six other senior classmates in the upcoming 2007-08 season. She never declared her intent to join the pool of potential WNBA draft picks prior to the draft.
“This was not a mistake by WVU, Meg Bulger or her family,” coach Mike Carey said. “This was a mistake by the WNBA and the Sacramento Monarchs. Meg will be back for her senior season in 2007-08 and we’re very excited to have her back for the upcoming year.”
Bulger tore her left knee’s anterior cruciate ligament in a game at St. John’s January 29, 2006, and re-injured that knee in August, forcing her to miss the entire 2006-07 season. She averaged 19.8 points per game in the 18 contests prior to her first injury. At that time the All-American and all-BIG EAST performer was third in the conference in scoring and led the nation with a 3.5 3-point field goals made per game average. Bulger has scored 1,285 career points, 14th all-time in school history.

 

[kennadog]

Well, heck....do we get another pick? How could this happen?

 

[StevenHW]

..."This was not a mistake by WVU, Meg Bulger or her family," coach Mike Carey said. "This was a mistake by the WNBA and the Sacramento Monarchs. Meg will be back for her senior season in 2007-08 and we’re very excited to have her back for the upcoming year."...

Yeah, I'll say it was a mistake by the league and by the Monarchs!

How embarrasing! No offense to Meg and her family, but it looks like the Monarchs wasted a pick. Even on the Monarchs' blog, Coach Boucek once said that she wouldn't have been to play very much --- if at all, anyway --- next season because of her torn ACL in the past. If that's the case, then why even bother selecting her? (Even though she was #36 out of 39 draft choices?)

This is what Boucek said in the Draft Blog:

Question: Thoughts on Bulger?

Boucek: "Bulger is not on the radar because of her injuries (torn ACL). We feel like she's a sleeper, too. She's a very high-percentage shooter and you can always use those. She probably won't play this year, which is better for us because next year is an expansion year. We'll see where she is physically and whenever we do get her, we're excited to see if she would be a piece for us."

The part where Boucek said that 2008 being an expansion year, is a reference that the WNBA might expand to at least another city, whether it is Kansas City, Denver, Atlanta, or Bentonville (Arkansas).

I notice that the WNBA's draft board has been revised to reflect that Meg is declared ineligible:
http://www.wnba.com/draft2007/draft_board.html

But anyway, does this mean the Monarchs still have the draft rights to Meg, when she does become available?

 

[Monty'sBiggestFan]

I'm curious to know what happened here too. It seems from some discussions on another board that if she still had eligibility on the table (which apparently now she clearly did), she would have had to affirmatively renounced them and petition the league to be eligible for the draft. And folks further suggested that the league prepares a list of these players for distribution to all teams prior to the draft. If that indeed is the process, we theoretically could have not have screwed up and taken her thinking she was draftable without being given erroneous information that she had declared for the draft. If we screwed up, then it seems like we don't get anything but a big fat bowl of nothing.

I would like to see the Ms get some compensation for this faux paus. What that might be, I'm not entirely sure I even care at this point. If it is expansion next year for sure, I might want us to have another pick in the 3rd round somewhere. Like say the top of it or the same spot we had this year and used it for Bulger. I'm not sure I'm crazy about being allowed to hold her rights but that could work too and give us a body to expose for the draft or replace someone we might lose.

I find it hard to believe tho, with the quotes from Whiz in the Bee yesterday and the Q&A or whereever these quotes from Boucek from from that we screwed up and wrote a name down we didn't expect to be eligible. They seemed to have a plan for why they chose her and I don't think that came to them that morning on a whim.

 

[Purple Reign]

The Monarchs could have used that pick on Kiera Hardy, who was the last pick of the draft. I saw her play against either Rutgers or Temple (I can't remember). She was pretty good. If she turns out to be a player, than the Monarchs dropped the ball on that pick.

 

[StevenHW]

In response to MBF's opinion:

...I would like to see the Ms get some compensation for this faux paus. What that might be, I'm not entirely sure I even care at this point. If it is expansion next year for sure, I might want us to have another pick in the 3rd round somewhere...

According to the following article, the Monarchs will indeed be compensated for the bungle. However, the M's will be awarded another pick at the tail end of the third round of next year's draft.

Personally, and this is just my opinion, even if Bulger was eligible this year, I don't think the Monarchs should have drafted her anyway, if only because of her torn ACL situation. Perhaps, as one new poster-member had mentioned on another thread, the Monarchs could've selected Chelsi Welch from Univ. of Oklahoma instead!

Has any other WNBA team ever experienced a similar situation like this before? That is, drafting a player without knowing she was ineligible?

Anyway, the following story is from the SacBee's online site today:

* * * * * * * * *
MONARCHS MISTAKENLY DRAFT INELIGIBLE PLAYER
By Melody Gutierrez - Bee Staff Writer
Published 1:38 pm PDT Friday, April 6, 2007


The WNBA has voided the Monarchs third round selection of Meg Bulger in Wednesday's WNBA Draft after the league learned the 6-foot forward from West Virginia had not declared herself eligible.

Bulger, who redshirted this past season, has one more year of NCAA eligibility after re-injuring her surgically repaired knee. She plans to return to the Mountaineers next season and will be able to enter 2008 WNBA Draft.

"Basically the league messed up," said Monarchs coach Jenny Boucek.

The WNBA is taking responsibility after it listed Bulger in their Draft Guide. The Monarchs drafted Bulger with their 36th pick in the third round. They will be given an additional pick at the end of the third round of the 2008 draft, if the union approves.

Boucek said she doesn't expect this decision to impact the Monarchs negatively because the team had not expected Bulger to be ready to play during the upcoming season.

Monarchs General Manager John Whisenant had called his draft pick of Bulger a "gamble" before learning that she was ineligible. Bulger tore her anterior cruciate ligament in 2006, missing the final 13 games of her junior season.

She then re-injured her knee and missed the 2006-07 season.

"It won't affect us," Boucek said. "We weren't planning on her to be here next year. It basically gives us another good player in the third round (next year)." Before the WNBA realized their mistake, West Virginia coach Mike Carey cleared things up with MSNsportsNET.com.

"This was not a mistake by WVU, Meg Bulger or her family," Carey told the Web site. "This was a mistake by the WNBA and the Sacramento Monarchs. Meg will be back for her senior season in 2007-08 and we're very excited to have her back for the upcoming year."
* * * * * * *

 

[Monty'sBiggestFan]

Why would we have used that pick on Kiera Hardy? We already have more guards than we have minutes for. Hardy is a 5'5"-ish shooting guard they are "hoping" to convert to point guard at this level. Where would she have fit? Our roster, last I checked has 15 players on it, and we can only carry 11 active players, plus 2 inactives. Of the 5 guards we have 3 of them do or can play at the point. We have Dickson now who also technically has played some point, and LaToya Bond our dispersal draft pick is another I believe converted point guard. now I don't even have Bond, Wilkins or Dickson on our 13 player roster and I have 12 people fighting for the 11 active slots. Those three will be fighting for a spot in the final 13 and let the chips fall where they may. We weren't drafting for anything we needed in the 3rd round, so I'm not feeling that we slept on or missed out on somebody by taking Bulger or anybody else for that matter.

The Monarchs, according my extrapolations from their draft blog had more wings and bigs left on their draft board than guards. So I'm not sure she was the direction they were heading in for that pick even if the Bulger thing wasn't screwed up. My guess was Bulger was the type of player they were looking for, wing and even then it was unlikely the 3rd round pick would have made this team this year anyway.

 

[Purple Reign]

Why would we have used that pick on Kiera Hardy? We already have more guards than we have minutes for. Hardy is a 5'5"-ish shooting guard they are "hoping" to convert to point guard at this level. Where would she have fit? Our roster, last I checked has 15 players on it, and we can only carry 11 active players, plus 2 inactives. Of the 5 guards we have 3 of them do or can play at the point. We have Dickson now who also technically has played some point, and LaToya Bond our dispersal draft pick is another I believe converted point guard. now I don't even have Bond, Wilkins or Dickson on our 13 player roster and I have 12 people fighting for the 11 active slots. Those three will be fighting for a spot in the final 13 and let the chips fall where they may. We weren't drafting for anything we needed in the 3rd round, so I'm not feeling that we slept on or missed out on somebody by taking Bulger or anybody else for that matter.

The Monarchs, according my extrapolations from their draft blog had more wings and bigs left on their draft board than guards. So I'm not sure she was the direction they were heading in for that pick even if the Bulger thing wasn't screwed up. My guess was Bulger was the type of player they were looking for, wing and even then it was unlikely the 3rd round pick would have made this team this year anyway.

OK.

 

[mdme]

shouldn't they give us another "36th" pick next year instead of at the tailend?

 

[Carole]

So, we weren't going to use her anyway = I wonder how much they pay for a player to show up and practice and just sit. And then probably get waived from camp. She chose a good alternative - finish school instead of that scenario!