If an opposing coach spent a week game-planning for Naomi White, they probably slept badly and lost anyway. That's the kind of week it was. And while the rest of us were watching the scoreboard, the Pac-12 office was watching the tape. Our take: Naomi White just made herself the name other teams have to talk about in the dark. That matters for every Coug who remembers when our women's basketball program was an afterthought. It is not an afterthought anymore.
This is a program that keeps stacking good news. The conference just laid out the Pac-12 lays out 2026-27 women's hoops schedule for our Cougs, and you can bet White will be the circled name on every opposing assistant coach's copy. Meanwhile, our Cougar Women's Golf packs the clubs and heads to Wisconsin, and our volleyball team is already hitting the road to start Pac-12 volleyball season. The point is not just that one player had a good week. The point is that across the board, these teams are making Pullman a place the rest of the conference has to respect. When the Pac-12 notices your guard is a problem, you are no longer hiding in the Palouse.
Here is the concrete takeaway: Naomi White did not just win a few games. She put a target on her back, and that is exactly where we want it. Opposing offenses will now spend practice time trying to figure out how to get past her. That is a luxury Pullman basketball has not always had. It changes how scouts talk about the program, how recruits hear about it, and how the rest of the conference schedules their shootarounds. The open question is how the team handles that attention when it shows up in November. If she keeps playing like she did last week, the answer is probably fine.