Avery Howell’s Watch-List Place Gives UW a Measured Preseason Marker

Washington guard Avery Howell has been named to the 2027 Ann Meyers Drysdale Award preseason watch list, a useful early marker for a Huskies player whose first season in Seattle supplied both production and range. The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame award recognizes the top shooting guard in NCAA Division I women’s basketball, and Washington says Howell is one of 20 players on its preseason list.

The restrained reading is also the right one. A watch-list selection is recognition before the season, not an award result, an all-season judgment or a promise about Washington’s finish. It tells readers that Howell’s 2025–26 record has put her in a national positional conversation. The games that will determine whether she remains in it have not yet been played.

What the recognition actually measures

There is value in keeping the label precise. The Ann Meyers Drysdale Award is a shooting-guard honor, and the preseason list is the opening step in its selection process. Washington reports that fan voting begins Friday, Oct. 30, followed by three rounds. The list is scheduled to shrink to 10 candidates in February and five finalists in March.

That calendar makes Howell’s inclusion a starting point rather than a conclusion. A preseason watch list can be an informed acknowledgment of prior work without settling who will lead the position in the coming months. For a Seattle audience, that distinction helps preserve what is meaningful here: Howell has earned an invitation into the discussion; she has not yet reached its final stage.

The record behind the selection

Washington’s release gives the choice a substantial statistical foundation. In 2025–26, Howell averaged 14.2 points and a team-leading 8.3 rebounds per game. The school says she led the Big Ten with 6.8 defensive rebounds per game and made 43.1% of her three-point attempts. She received All-Big Ten honorable mention after that first Husky season.

The combination is what makes the watch-list fit intelligible. A guard who rebounds at that rate, defends possessions to their finish and converts threes efficiently affects more than one part of the floor. That is an observation about the documented numbers, not an attempt to assign Howell a final rank among the players on the list.

The single-game record offers useful texture. Washington cites Howell’s 22 points and 16 rebounds in the Huskies’ Jan. 1 upset of No. 6 Michigan, a performance that brought her first USBWA National Player of the Week award. The school also lists a 34-point, 14-rebound game against Wisconsin that included six made threes, plus 17 points, 11 rebounds and a career-high five steals in a win at No. 16 Maryland. She finished the season with seven double-doubles, according to the release.

Her shooting production reached Washington’s record book, too. The school says her 85 made threes ranked third in program history for a season, while her 43.1% three-point rate ranked eighth. In the first round of the 2026 NCAA Tournament against South Dakota State, Howell made a career-high seven threes and scored 30 points in Washington’s win. The release says the seven threes tied for the third-highest total in NCAA Tournament history and that Howell became the first Husky to score at least 30 in the tournament since 2017.

Those accomplishments explain why a preseason list would notice Howell. They do not establish how many points she will score this season, whether Washington will win a particular game or which player will ultimately receive the award. The record is strong enough without asking it to answer questions that remain open.

The next evidence begins Nov. 2

Washington is scheduled to open its season against UC San Diego on Nov. 2 at 11 a.m. PT in Alaska Airlines Arena. That game is the next opportunity for the preseason recognition to give way to new evidence. It will not, by itself, settle an award race either. Seasons are built from the accumulation of possessions, opponents and months of work.

There is already a relevant local companion in Seattle Hoops Insider’s coverage of Sayvia Sellers’ preseason All-Big Ten selection. Together, the two preseason recognitions offer a narrow but encouraging view of Washington’s backcourt entering the schedule. Neither should be mistaken for a team result that has already been earned.

For now, Howell’s news is best understood as a credible preseason honor with a clear factual basis: 20 names, a position-specific award and a season of production that made the Washington guard worth tracking. The careful part comes next—letting the 2026–27 season, rather than the October label, decide the rest.