Jackie Young Just Made WNBA History. Maybe It’s Time We Talk About Her Like the Star She Is.

The Las Vegas Aces guard scored a career-high 35 points and tied a WNBA record with 22 points in one quarter. The performance should restart a conversation about how easily excellence can become overlooked when a great player shares the floor with other stars.

By Huddle & Whistle Staff
September 18, 2026

Jackie Young needed one quarter Thursday night to remind everyone that the Las Vegas Aces have more than one player capable of taking over a basketball game.

Ten minutes.

Twenty-two points.

Eight made field goals on nine attempts.

Three three-pointers.

And a share of a WNBA record.

Young finished with a career-high 35 points and five assists as the Aces overwhelmed the Seattle Storm 114-77 at Climate Pledge Arena on September 17. Her 22 first-quarter points tied the WNBA record for points in a single quarter, matching the mark held by Jewell Loyd, Brittney Sykes and Diana Taurasi.

The obvious headline is that Young made history.

The more interesting question is why performances like this still seem capable of reminding people just how good Jackie Young is.

At some point, “underrated” stops being a compliment.

Young has been the No. 1 overall pick in a WNBA Draft. She has won three WNBA championships. She has been named an All-Star multiple times, earned All-WNBA honors twice and won the league’s Most Improved Player award.

She is not emerging.

She has arrived.

And Thursday night offered another reason to stop treating her like a supporting character in somebody else’s story.

Twenty-Two Points Changed the Game Before It Really Started

There are career nights that slowly build.

A player gets hot in the second quarter, finds another gear after halftime and suddenly looks up in the fourth with 30 points.

This wasn’t that.

Young attacked Seattle almost immediately.

She scored 22 of Las Vegas’ 25 first-quarter points, shooting 8 of 9 from the field and 3 of 4 from three-point range. By the time the first quarter ended, the Aces led 25-13 and Young had already tied a league record.

Think about that for a moment.

One player scored 88 percent of her team’s points in the opening quarter of a professional basketball game.

Young eventually finished 12 of 18 from the field, 4 of 8 from three and 7 of 7 at the free-throw line. Her 35 points surpassed her previous career high of 34.

Las Vegas never gave Seattle much room to recover.

The Aces scored 27 points in the second quarter, 33 in the third and another 29 in the fourth on the way to the 37-point victory. A’ja Wilson added 29 points, giving Young and Wilson 64 combined points on a night when Seattle scored 77 as an entire team.

That statistic tells its own story.

It also explains why Las Vegas can be such a difficult problem.

Jackie Young Is Not the Other Star

A’ja Wilson deserves every bit of attention that comes with being one of the defining players of this era.

But recognizing Wilson’s greatness shouldn’t require minimizing the players around her.

Young is increasingly making that distinction impossible.

Through 39 games this season, she is averaging 18.9 points, 6.6 assists and 4.4 rebounds while shooting 48.3 percent from the field and 38.7 percent from three.

Those are not role-player numbers.

They’re not complementary-player numbers either.

They’re the numbers of a player who can score efficiently, create offense for teammates and punish defenses that devote too much attention elsewhere.

And that’s before considering everything Young has already accomplished.

Las Vegas selected her first overall in the 2019 WNBA Draft after her career at Notre Dame. She was named the WNBA’s Most Improved Player in 2022 and became a critical part of the Aces’ championship teams in 2022, 2023 and 2025. She earned All-WNBA Second Team honors in 2023 and 2025.

In April, Las Vegas re-signed her.

Aces president and general manager Nikki Fargas called Young a “foundational piece” of the franchise’s success when announcing the deal.

Foundational is the important word.

Young isn’t simply playing beside the Aces’ stars.

She is one of them.

The No. 1 Pick Who Kept Getting Better

Young’s career is also interesting because it challenges the way we sometimes judge highly drafted athletes.

Being selected first overall creates an expectation of immediate superstardom.

Every game becomes evidence.

Every statistic becomes a referendum on whether a team made the right decision.

But player development rarely follows such a clean timeline.

Young’s career has been less about arriving fully formed and more about adding layers.

As a rookie in 2019, she was primarily a facilitator. She led Las Vegas in assists 18 times that season. Over time, her scoring expanded, her three-point shooting became increasingly dangerous and her role evolved.

The league recognized that growth when Young won Most Improved Player in 2022.

Then came championships.

Then All-Star selections.

Then All-WNBA recognition.

Now, seven years after Las Vegas made her the first player selected in the 2019 draft, she is producing one of the strongest statistical seasons of her professional career.

That’s a development story worth paying attention to, particularly for young athletes.

Not every No. 1 pick has to become the finished product immediately.

Sometimes development continues even after the world has decided you’re already supposed to be great.

Then Came 35

Thursday’s performance adds another chapter.

The Aces were playing their first WNBA game following the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup break.

Instead of easing back into league competition, Young produced the highest-scoring game of her WNBA career.

There is something revealing about that.

Elite athletes are constantly asked to move between environments while making the transition look effortless.

Different teammates. Different systems. Travel. Recovery. International competition. Professional competition.

Then the ball goes up and the expectation remains the same: perform.

Young did more than perform.

She took control of the game.

The Quiet Superstar Problem

Young also presents an interesting challenge for modern sports media.

The attention economy rewards visibility.

Personality matters. Social media matters. Branding matters. Viral moments matter. Interviews matter. Storylines matter.

None of that is inherently negative.

Athletes now possess unprecedented opportunities to build audiences, control their narratives and create businesses around their names.

But there is another side to that evolution.

We can become so accustomed to identifying stars by the volume of conversation surrounding them that sometimes we have to be reminded to look at the basketball.

Young’s game demands exactly that.

She doesn’t need to be louder than everyone else to matter.

She doesn’t need a manufactured debate surrounding her every week.

And she doesn’t need to be compared against her own teammates to establish her value.

Sometimes excellence is enough.

On Thursday night, it was impossible to miss.

Las Vegas Has a Very Good Problem

The larger basketball implication may matter even more as the postseason approaches.

Las Vegas improved to 28-13 with Thursday’s victory and extended its winning streak to four games. The Aces are fighting for postseason positioning, with the top four teams earning home-court advantage in the best-of-three opening round.

Opponents already know what happens when Wilson takes over.

Thursday demonstrated the other problem.

What happens when Jackie Young does it?

What happens when a defense spends its preparation trying to contain one superstar and another scores 22 points in the first quarter?

What happens when Young is hitting from three, attacking the basket and creating for teammates while Wilson is simultaneously demanding attention?

That is the value of having multiple stars who don’t require the same possessions or the same spaces to influence a game.

Seattle experienced the problem in real time.

By the time the Storm had an opportunity to adjust, Young had already made history.

Women’s Basketball Has More Stars Than the Conversation Sometimes Allows

There is a broader point here too.

Women’s basketball is experiencing extraordinary growth in visibility, investment and cultural relevance.

That increased attention is good for the sport.

But increased attention doesn’t automatically mean evenly distributed attention.

A handful of players can dominate national conversation while accomplished players throughout the league receive considerably less recognition.

Young’s résumé illustrates the gap.

She was the first overall pick.

She is a three-time WNBA champion.

She is a multiple-time All-Star.

She is a two-time All-WNBA selection.

She won Most Improved Player.

She won Olympic gold in 3x3 basketball at the Tokyo Games and another Olympic gold with the United States’ 5x5 team in Paris.

Now she owns a share of a WNBA scoring record.

What exactly is left for Jackie Young to do before we stop describing her as somebody people should pay more attention to and simply recognize her as one of the league’s established stars?

Maybe that’s the real conversation coming out of Seattle.

Stop Calling Her Underrated

Sports loves the word underrated.

It sounds complimentary.

Usually it means we believe an athlete is better than the attention she receives.

But eventually the word starts saying more about us than it does about the player.

How long can someone keep producing at an elite level before the audience, media and broader basketball culture adjust?

Young has already built the résumé.

Thursday night simply provided another spectacular entry.

The beauty of the performance wasn’t just the 35 points.

It was the speed with which she seized the game.

Ten minutes into the night, Young had 22 points and a share of league history.

There was no debate to manufacture.

No hypothetical ranking required.

No campaign necessary.

The basketball said enough.

Jackie Young walked into Climate Pledge Arena Thursday night and delivered the best scoring performance of her WNBA career.

Maybe it’s time we stop asking whether she’s underrated.

Maybe it’s time we simply pay attention.

Huddle & Whistle covers the athletes, decisions and stories shaping sports beyond the scoreboard. Read more original sports coverage at HuddleAndWhistle.com and subscribe to Huddle & Whistle on YouTube and Substack.