Charli Collier has spent her last season in college basketball adjusting to a new coach, to a coronavirus-safe form of training, to disrupted classes and to conferring with her teammates over video calls. All the while, she coped with the expectation that she would become the top pick in the next W.N.B.A. draft.
“We had the pandemic, had the whole canceling of the term, and then — boom — coaching change, and that just really shook my whole world,” Collier, a 6-foot-5 junior center for Texas, said in a phone interview on Thursday. Her sixth-seeded team will face Maryland, a No.