Tuesday, June 12, 2007

First All-Star Voting Returns

The first returns are in from the WNBA's All-Star voting, and Sue Bird and Lauren Jackson are both leading at their respective positions.

Sue has an advantage of just 17 votes on Becky Hammon, but she's got nearly twice the votes of the third guard in the voting, so she's looking very good for a starting spot. That third guard is, at the moment, Betty Lennox, but it looks like she'll have the cold comfort of being first runner-up.

At forward, Jackson (20,464 votes) and Diana Taurasi (18,584) have an enormous advantage over Sheryl Swoopes (9,232) and the rest of the pack.

The most interesting race is at center, where Ruth Riley of the Silver Stars has 12,240 votes to the 12,126 of the Storm's Janell Burse, with Sacramento's Yolanda Griffith also in quintuple digits.

The moral of that story: vote, vote, vote! Vote now! The Storm has a real chance of having three All-Star starters.

One slightly disappointing bit of news: Iziane Castro Marques doesn't appear on the first returns, nor do any other write-in candidates. Call me a cynic, but I'd be very surprised if Izi hadn't gotten at least 732 write-in votes (the total for Minnesota's Tamika Raymond, last amongst forwards on the ballot) from intrepid Storm fans.

2 comments:

Patrick said...

Not sure if it matters, but Izi is listed as a Guard on the WNBA.com write-in pull down. Does this mean that the league will invalidate write-ins with Betty and Sue checked and Izi written in as having three guard votes?

kp said...

My assumption is that the positions are just there as a guide and the process automatically places your write-in wherever you *don't* vote for someone from the ballot, but I'm not sure. It's a good question.