Previously: Fope Ayo, Devin Cosgriff

I’ll be honest, Michigan’s backcourt situation was making me nervous. From my last post on incoming freshman Devin Cosgriff:

While I really like Cosgriff as a prospect, relying on one player — particularly a freshman — as the sole reserve for an entire position group is scary. Even if you trust your scouting, injuries are unpredictable.

Those fears are now dispelled. Last week, seemingly out of the ether, Michigan announced the addition of 5’6” Australian point guard Dallas Loughridge, a 22-year-old with experience in both professional leagues and FIBA international tournaments.

We don’t have recruiting rankings for Loughridge but we do have years worth of stats from various levels of competition.

Let’s start with her highest-level professional league, the WNBL, which attracts players from around the world and has sent a number of players along to the WNBA. In her third season in the league, Loughridge won the 2025-26 WNBL Breakout Player of the Year award, averaging 16.4 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 4.0 assists in 35.9 minutes per game while shooting 36.1% on three-pointers, 42.9% on twos, and 88.1% from the free throw line.

Loughridge played alongside Stephanie Talbot of the Las Vegas Aces and 2020 Australian Olympic Team as well as former South Carolina standout and current Portland Fire forward Sania Feagin. She finished second on the team in scoring (less than a point per game behind Feagin), second in assists, and first in three-pointers made. Adelaide tied for last in the league at 6-17 but Loughridge was a bright spot.

Previous Breakout Player award winners include Talbot, three-time WNBA MVP Lauren Jackson, WNBA All-Star Ezi Magbegor, former Nebraska All-Big Ten point guard Jaz Shelley, and Atlanta Dream guard Isobel Borlase.

In her first two WNBL seasons, Loughridge played for the Southside Melbourne Flyers, where she teamed up with Naz Hillmon for the 2024-25 season. A past Wolverine to future Wolverine moment (thank you, Hockeybear):

After barely playing as a rookie, Loughridge averaged 11.2 points, 1.5 rebounds, and 2.1 assists over 29.0 minutes per game in that 24-25 season, making 34 of 69 threes (49.2%) and hitting 89.1% of her free throws.

Most recently, Loughridge is having a spectacular — and still ongoing — season for the Casey Cavaliers of the NBL1 South, an Australian semi-pro league that’s a step down in competition level from the WNBL. She ranks second in the league at 25.7 points per game while shooting a scorching 45.4% on 8.6 three-point attempts per game, 55.9% on two-pointers, and 89.1% from the line. She’s also averaging 3.6 rebounds, 5.1 assists, and 1.8 steals per game while only committing 2.7 turnovers, and she leads the league in three-pointers made per game (3.9). (Stats as of June 30th.)

Last year, Loughridge won the league’s Youth Player of the Year award while playing for the Dandenong Rangers. The main changes in the past year are that she’s taking a much higher volume of three-point shots — over three more attempts per game — and hitting a significantly higher percentage of her attempts inside the arc.

The four previous winners of the NBL1 South Youth Player of the Year are New York Liberty rookie Anneli Maley, Seattle Storm guard Jade Melbourne, Portland Fire rookie Nyadiew Puoch, and WNBL standout Shaneice Swain, who was drafted by the Los Angeles Sparks but hasn’t yet appeared for them.

Michigan’s official release contains her FIBA stats from a couple successful international tournament runs:

Loughridge has expressed a desire to play for the Australian Olympic team and her recent pro success indicates she has a legitimate shot at making the Opals roster.

As you, the astute reader, have ascertained, Loughridge is a really damn good shooter.

YouTube is not short on highlights from both the WNBL and NBL1 South, a pleasant change from mining the depths to find a play or two from American high school recruits.

The main thing that jumps out from Loughridge’s highlights is her three-point shooting. She’s a high-volume deep threat who gets her shot off in multiple ways — as a standstill spot-up shooter, relocating off the ball, or creating her own look off the dribble.

She even possesses a reliable stepback jumper, which you don’t see often at this level. Her first four shots on this highlight reel are all stepbacks, three of them from beyond the arc:

She looks really, really comfortable with that crossover-to-stepback move. Her impressive three-point percentages look even better given how many she creates herself. That’s a particularly useful skill to have in the bag late in the shot clock.

Based on both stats and highlights, it looks like Loughridge drives looking to score first and pass second. She has some nifty finishes around the hoop, though a couple WNBL full-game highlight reels show her getting blocked by bigger defenders. She gets some nice lanes to drive into because of the threat of her outside shot.

She’s not an unwilling passer; there are some tough kickouts from the paint and the occasional drop-off to a post scorer in her highlights. She shows off a pretty tight handle on the ball. Her height can be a limiting factor when she’s operating in traffic.

I’m not going to attempt to project her defensive impact based on highlight reels that almost exclusively show offensive plays. Her steal numbers aren’t very high. It’s safe to say she’s going to be a very different small guard than Michigan had in Brooke Quarles Daniels.

I’m now very intrigued to see which lineup Kim Barnes Arico chooses to start next year. Michigan has lost one starter from last season (Daniels) and added two starter-quality players in Loughridge and Stanford transfer Courtney Ogden.

While Loughridge is a very different player from Daniels, she’s a one-for-one replacement in terms of size if U-M wants to roll out another four-guard starting lineup. Ogden provides more size at 6’1”.

Either way, both Loughridge and Ogden should get extensive playing time — I’d expect the one who doesn’t start to be the first player off the bench, though a Te’Yala Delfosse breakout could complicate that picture. This is a good problem to have.

I love the way Loughridge’s game fits on the current roster. Having a knockdown shooter next to Mila Holloway, Syla Swords, and Olivia Olson is going to put defenses in a serious bind. KBA should have a great time drawing up ways to get Loughridge and Swords open for catch-and-shoot opportunities, while Holloway and Olson can expect clear lanes to the hoop as defenders are preoccupied guarding the three-point line.

Odgen is also a proficient three-point shooter. Michigan’s offense was very good last year but was also prone to serious lulls, especially against elite teams, because defenses could essentially ignore Daniels as a scoring threat and ruin U-M’s spacing. That won’t be the case this year. This should be one of the most potent offenses in the country.

Even in the strong likelihood that Loughridge isn’t a Daniels-level defender, her presence on the roster raises Michigan’s ceiling. She’s not simply going to fill in minutes when U-M’s junior trio needs rest, she’s going to have a major impact. Her addition solidifies the team’s outlook as a Big Ten title and Final Four contender.

While the press release doesn’t say for certain, the headline “Wolverines Add Loughridge for 2026-27” makes me believe this is a one-year addition, especially since she’s already 22 and a pro-quality player. This seems like a move made with a WNBA future in mind.

Her last name is pronounced “LOCK-ridge.” Thank you to Char for digging up video of Loughridge saying it herself.

I highly recommend reading this ESPN article on Loughridge getting in touch with her Indigenous heritage:

Her great grandmother was “heavily involved” in the Australian rodeo scene.

Loughridge missed an entire NBL1 South season in 2022-23 after an ACL injury. While that delayed her development, it sure doesn’t seem to have hampered it.

Photo credit: WNBL