Gianna Kneepkens is headed for the WNBA draft after helping UCLA win its first NCAA women’s basketball title on April 5, a 79-51 victory over South Carolina that capped a season in which she became one of the country’s most efficient perimeter scorers. She is projected to go near the middle of the first round on April 13.
The 6-foot guard scored 15 points in the title game and made 42.9% of her three-pointers at UCLA, then spent the days after the championship waiting for the next step. For Kneepkens, that step comes after a college career that ended with a national crown and the kind of résumé that has her expected to hear her name early on draft night.
Her rise did not begin in Los Angeles. It started at Duluth Marshall, the private K-12 school in Duluth with just shy of 500 students where she followed five older brothers who also went there and played basketball. Before Kneepkens took to the court as a seventh-grader, Marshall had been to the girls basketball state tournament only once, in 2000. By the time she finished there, the program had reached Class 2A in 2020 and 2021, and she had become the face of the program’s transformation.
The loudest proof came in the 2021 girls basketball state quarterfinals, when Kneepkens scored a state-record 67 points in a 94-91 loss to Providence Academy. The game stands as the MSHSL single-game scoring record in girls basketball. It was the sort of performance that sounded unreal even to people who had watched her dominate all season, and it came after she had already put up 51 points in a game against International Falls during her sophomore year. By her final season, she was averaging a state-record 43.1 points per game.
Those numbers made sense to the people who saw her every day. Betsy Kneepkens said of her daughter’s path through northern Minnesota, “It’s a miracle, no hockey,” and added, “You’re in northern Minnesota, it’s hockey country, and it’s hard to find hoops to play on.” She said, “If you’re not in the Twin Cities, sometimes you’re somewhat invisible, and she did it. She had a goal.”
Former teammates and coaches still talk about how overwhelming she was to guard. C.J. Osuchukwu said, “The way she was scoring — she was getting triple-teamed, hanging pull-up, shooting threes from 40 feet,” while Dyami Starks called her “one of the most fluid athletes I’ve been around” and added, “She’s graceful. She looks like a swan playing basketball.” Conner Goetz said, “Even with all the film, we’re like, ‘All right, well, Gianna is a great player... [but], okay, but who are they really playing?’” He said, “Then we saw it firsthand, and it didn’t matter who she was playing.... There’s a reason she’ll be a top first-round draft pick.”
That reputation followed her to UCLA after she joined the Bruins as a graduate transfer out of Utah. She quickly fit into a team good enough to win a title, and she said the move meant more because of the people around her. “I have so much gratitude for my teammates for welcoming me from the first time I got here,” Kneepkens said. “I love these girls so much, and they’re going to be part of my life forever.”
The next chapter is now close. A player who once put up 67 in a high school quarterfinal, then helped deliver a championship on college basketball’s biggest stage, is about to find out where the league sees her fit. For Duluth Marshall and for everyone who watched her score from everywhere on the floor, the answer has been clear for years.
