Kara Lawson Jennifer Pottheiser/NBAE/Getty Images

If you have been watching the NCAA Tournament, then there is no doubt you have seen Sacramento Monarchs guard Kara Lawson, alongside Carolyn Peck and Trey Wingo as the analysts and anchor of ESPN's tournament coverage.

Not many people can claim to have seen as much college hoops this month as Lawson, who said that while first two weekends of the tournament meant 16-hour days, she has no complaints.

“Are you kidding me? We had four TVs, with four different games going on, it’s not too bad,” she said with a laugh about the opening weekend of games. “The biggest challenge was trying to keep track of four games at once.”

We caught up with Lawson to get her thoughts on the top college seniors she has seen this season and find out who has impressed her the most. Below are Lawson’s top 10 WNBA Draft prospects, in alphabetical order,
with complete analysis from the player/analyst.

Chante Black, Duke, 6-5, Center

Chante Black is 6-5 and she’s very athletic and that resonates more than anything in our league because there is always, always, always a need for post players and for athletic post players, so she’s got that going for her. She also is pretty skilled offensively, she can go right and she can go left. She’s improved her passing out of the double team over the course of last year and this year, so passing the ball out of the post is an area she’s really improved upon. And she’s the type of player defensively that can block shots for you, and she’s built to really have an easier transition than the other post players in this draft because of her size and her athletic ability. When it comes to being able to defend on the perimeter and defend on ball screens and defend one-on-one from the top of key, I think Chante Black will have an easier transition in doing that. She played on a great defensive team and she was a big part in one of the best defensive teams in the country this year in Duke. I think she’s another one like DeWanna Bonner that doesn’t necessarily have to get bigger, but have to get stronger and get better at dealing with contact because there is a lot more that doesn’t get called in the pros. So you have to be able to take contact and still finish on the offensive end, not get pushed out of positioning in the post, and handle that. So that’s an area that she’ll need to continue to grow in.

DeWanna Bonner, Auburn, 6-4, Guard/Forward

I think Bonner is really intriguing just because of her size and her length. She’s a super athlete and is at her best facing the basket and driving, and she has three-point range. I think she’s got a lot of skills offensively, she runs the court really well - she gets up and down. The biggest challenge for her will be the physicality of the league. I don’t say that because she’s skinny, per se. There are a lot of players that are skinny and can be effective. She’s just going to have to work on getting stronger and playing stronger and not letting physical play affect the way she plays. I think she’s a player that, if she finds the right place, can really present a lot matchup problems depending on where that team plays her. Whether it’s her size at the 3 or whether it’s her quickness at the 4. She’s got an opportunity to be one of those matchup nightmare types of people that you can switch from a 3 to 4 depending on the game. She’s versatile enough that she can guard some of the great four players that we have in our league on a couple of possessions and then turn around and have to guard a player on the perimeter. That is what her athletic ability and her length will enable her to do. I think from that perspective – both offensively and defensively – as a 3 or a 4 - depending on how quickly she picks up the game and the physicality nature of the league, I think she has a chance to cause some real problems for people because of her quickness.

Marissa Coleman, Maryland, 6-1, Forward

I really like Coleman in the draft. I think she has a great pro body, for one. She’s a 3 player that is strong, that can use her strength, she’s athletic, she has great versatility, she can shoot the three and she can also drive. I think she’s a very solid passer for her position and she’s gotten to handle the ball a lot at Maryland because they put the ball in her hands and let her create stuff. I know she’s worked hard on getting better defensively. That’s one thing I think she will learn as she gets into the pros is how to use her body more because they don’t call as much in our league. I think that can be to her advantage on the defensive end when she gets into the WNBA and learns how to use her body and how to be more physical. She’s a great rebounder for her position – she had 18 boards in their second round game. She’s just one of those players that can give you what you need. What I think I appreciate most about Marissa is that she’s never been a number one option on her team, if you look at her four years at Maryland, she’s never been the number one person. She’s never been the go-to person, so she’s not the type of kid that is going to struggle when she’s not getting the basketball or when she goes to a team that already has three or four other great players and that’s not going to be able to learn how to affect a game in different ways because she’s had to do that her whole career. Sometimes when you get star players, who have had the ball in their hands their entire career in college, they get to the pros and they struggle without it because they’re not used to it. Coleman doesn’t have to worry about that learning curve because that’s the kind of player she has been her whole career. She has the attitude that I’m just going to be successful with the opportunities that I get, and not complain about the ones I don’t, just be successful when I get the ball, or go and get the ball myself, go and get it off the boards and make something happen.

Angel McCoughtry, Louisville, 6-1, Forward

When you watch McCoughtry play, she’s definitely got pro-level athletic ability from the wing position and she’s just a pretty complete player. Offensively, she’s really improved her outside shooting throughout the course of her career. The pull up jump shot that she has - because she does elevate really well - is impossible to stop, at least at the collegiate level. The degree of difficulty of the shots that she’s able to make is pretty high level for a player in college. Then defensively she’s very instinctive on that end. She plays the passing lanes really well. I think she led the Big EAST in points, rebounds and steals for three years. I know she’s led them in steals for three years. She’s very active, really anticipatory. Those tend to be traits that carry over pretty well to our league as far as athletic ability, anticipation and ability to get shots. And she’s seen a lot of different defenses that are designed to stop her, so when she gets an opportunity in our league to go one-on-one that might be a breath of fresh air for her. I think she will make an impact as a rookie because her game is ready for the pros. You can plug her in the lineup and I think she can have a great impact right away because she is one of those players that doesn’t always need to score to have an impact on the game, she can do it in other ways like rebounding and getting steals and getting some open layups.

Renee Montgomery, Connecticut, 5-7, Guard

i think the thing that stands out about Montgomery is that she runs her team really well. The players on her team, you can tell, have a great respect for her and that she’s the leader of that team. She understands ebb and flow of the game and controlling that, which I think is a really important trait for our league because a lot of teams in our league really struggle finding someone to play that point guard position and having someone that they know they can count on. I think it’s a very valued position in our league and just by nature of where she’s played at University of Connecticut and her evolution to become a pretty complete leader, I think makes her a valuable commodity in the draft. Not to just totally play up her off the court/on the court leadership stuff, I mean she’s really got a lot of skills on the court. She can really shoot the basketball and she does a great job with their ball screens on offense and the ball is in her hands the majority of the time on the offensive end for them. And we’re a ball screen heavy league. To be a perimeter player in our league and be successful, you’ve got to be able to use ball screens and attack out of them and be functional out of them. And as a perimeter player defensively, you’ve got to be able to defend them because that is what a lot of teams run – high pick, high pick, high pick – and she does that at the college level, so she’s got a head start on doing that in the pros because whether you’re playing against a Becky Hammon or Sue Bird or Cappie Pondexter, you’re going to be going off of ball screens a lot of the game. Because she has the skill set going for her on the offensive end, I think that’s going to make her transition from the point guard spot.

Courtney Paris, Oklahoma, 6-4, Center

There a couple of things that Courtney has and that’s great hands and great feet. Great hands – I don’t know if people are born with them or they work on them – but a post player that has great hands, man, you just want to have those players on your team forever. I’ve played with some post players that had great hands. I got a chance to play with Yolanda Griffith, and it spoils you as a perimeter player because you can basically throw a pass anywhere and they’ll get it. That’s a great luxury to have because sometimes you can’t always put it in the perfect spot depending on the pressure you’re getting or the angle you have at that moment or sometimes you just misjudge the pass. Courtney has great hands and great feet. I had a chance to play with her – she’s the only player in this draft that I’ve ever played with through USA Basketball – and she’s a great person to be around, she was a great teammate for us at USA Basketball. I think the output of her great hands is her rebounding because she’s not the greatest jumper, but somehow she gets 14 rebounds every game. She’s one of those players also that gives you a good target, she posts up pretty well and it's easy to get her the basketball, you never have to dribble much to find her or get a perfect angle. For Courtney, obviously her biggest question is her fitness level, that’s no secret. That’s something that she’s going to have to continue to work on and improve. In our league there are a lot of mobile post players, that’s the way our league is going, or is at right now. So she’s going to have to be able to defend post players that can turn and face, that can shoot the three point shot, that can pop on the pick and roll. I think that will be her biggest challenge as she steps up and now all of a sudden you’re not just guarding a player that goes block to block, and not just a player you can sag off when they catch it in the high post to reverse the ball. Now you have to get up and defend them one-on-one from the top of the key. That is going to be the big transition; that and defending the pick and rolls and stepping out. It's just the mobility of the position at our level – and I don’t just say that for Courtney, I’ll say that for all of the posts – I think the biggest transition is defending the mobility and the skills of the post players that are in our league already.

Kristi Toliver, Maryland, 5-7, Guard

Kristi Toliver is just highly, highly skilled. I think from an offensive skill standpoint, she’s as skilled a guard that we've seen come into our league in the last few years. Her ball handling ability, her passing ability, her shooting ability, she’s very complete on the offensive end. She can just really shoot the ball and shoot it from deep, which is a great asset for her coming into our league. That’s a skill that a lot of teams covet; whether it's taking pressure off of a dominant presence on the interior, to give them more space, or if it's just drawing more attention to yourself and forcing them to play the point guard honest and give your wing players more looks. She has great vision and she’s really dangerous in transition because of her ability to shoot it. I think her game is a little more catered the way it is now to the pro game than the college game anyway. I think she’s more like a pro player, in terms of the reads that she can make and how she sees the game, so I think she has a great chance to be very successful early on. Another thing about Kristi that I really like is that she loves the game and she wants to be great. I think that is an attribute that you don’t find in a lot of players; some players are good just because they’ve always been good, or they work hard, but they’re not as concerned about being great and being one of the great players or the great guards. I think that she really wants to be an impact player and be an All-Star and be one of the top guards in our league. You can tell by her work ethic, and improving her game from year to year, that she’s moving in that direction.

Kia Vaughn, Rutgers, 6-4, Center

Kia Vaughn is a player that I think intrigues a lot of people because she was inconsistent in her senior year. But much like Marissa Coleman, if you were to build a pro body, I mean she’s got it. She’s 6-4 and she’s strong and she posts up really well, she can finish around the basket, she’s tough, she’s physical on defense, she doesn’t back down from anyone. She’s out of that Rutgers mold and let's face it, Rutgers in the last five or six years, their players have done really well in the WNBA. Whether it's Cappie or Essence had a great year last year, Chelsea’s been a great player for us in Sacramento, their players have done well, so I think in this NCAA Tournament she’s really starting to show what type of presence she can have in the paint and how she can dominate that end of the floor. I think it really started with, where it kind of opened people’s eyes, is when she dominated inside against Connecticut on the last Monday of the season. She really put on a great show in that game. I think she’s a player that is definitely moving herself up in March.

Ashley Walker, California, 6-1, Forward/Center

With Ashley Walker, I like that she is physical and I like that she finishes well and attacks. I think being out on the west coast that people don’t get to see her as much; I’m not saying she’s undervalued, but people don’t know as much about her and her game than maybe some of the players we get to see more games of their teams. She’s a work horse. She is really physical, she gets up and down the court really well, she’s a little undersized for the power forward position, but she posts up well, rebounds well, she scores and she’s been the go-to player on that team for a little over two years, so she’s had the pressure of getting most of the attention of the team she playing against. I think she has a chance to be a solid player. She’s just a solid all-around player. I’m not sure if she does anything absolutely great, but I think she’s productive and sometimes whether or not you have someone that does something really great, you just need someone to produce for you, someone that is smart enough to handle offensive and defensive schemes and can score for you. She reminds me a little bit of Crystal Kelly for us, who did a great job for us in Sacramento last year. She’s a little undersized at the power forward position, and was cut by Houston, but she just produces, she’s just a productive player. You give her the basketball and she scores, she understands how to defend, she‘s smart. I think Ashley walker could be in that mold of a player that really helped us last year as a rookie.

Shavonte Zellous, Pittsburgh, 5-10, Guard

Zellous has had a great year. She’s kind of put herself right below that first tier of perimeter players. She’s a two guard that can flat out score. She’s got great midrange game, the ability to create and she’s got great athletic ability on the perimeter. I like players that can score and can get their own shot and I think sometimes there are some teams that really, really need that, they need that shot in the arm. I absolutely think she can be the perfect player ot come off the bench because she’s a player that can kind of give your offense a shot in the arm if you’re team is struggling in that game. I just like how much she has improved every year. I really look at players that do improve every year and do they work on their game and do they get better. I think that is an important characteristic when you get to our league because so many players, when you get to our league, they stop getting better. So those players that continue to improve every year, they tend to make themselves into really good players and tend to make themselves into important pieces on their teams.