Marie Gulich was selected with the 12th and final pick of the first round by the Phoenix Mercury. She will report to camp on April 29.

“I did not expect that to be honest,” Gulich said of being a first-round pick. “I was thinking after the first round, just because so much has happened during this draft and so many players had declared for the draft that weren’t supposed to and stuff happened. I’m really excited.”

Gulich is the fourth Beaver to be selected in the WNBA draft in the past three seasons. Before former Beavers teammate Sydney Wiese was drafted by the Los Angeles Sparks last year, Jamie Weisner was taken with the 17th overall pick (fifth pick, second round) in the 2016 draft by the Connecticut Sun with Ruth Hamblin going the next pick to the Dallas Wings.

OSU’s other WNBA draft pick was Felicia Ragland, who went to the Seattle Storm with the 28th pick in 2011.

Mercury general manager Jim Pitman said the organization had its eye on Gulich for some time, but the past two or three months of the season “just kind of validated what we had kind of formulated in our minds that she was someone that we should be really interested in as we look at the latter part of the first round, and we were very fortunate that she was there when we picked at 12th.”

— Corvallis Gazette-Times