Former Ducks player hopes to make a mark on the court as her college journey reaches its senior year

Sedona Prince is entering her seventh and final year of college basketball. From her viral video Back in the NCAA Tournament bubble in 2021 for her role in a landmark antitrust lawsuit that will help raise money for college athletes, she has already made her mark on the court.

If she can help TCU have a memorable season on the field, that will be a welcome bonus.

Now 24, Prince was one of the lead prosecutors in the House vs. NCAA lawsuit that led to the $2.8 billion NCAA settlement agreement which recently received preliminary approval from a federal judge. When finally finalized, the deal will allow colleges to pay their athletes directly, perhaps as early as next fall. It also includes millions in damages.

“It’s a big win, something we’ve been striving for for a long time,” Prince said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Big step forward. There is still much to do in the future. It is more than we could ever ask for and a step in the right direction.”

Prince’s journey

It’s been quite a journey for Prince, whose career started at Texas in 2018 before heading to Oregon after breaking her leg playing for USA Basketball.

She was with the Ducks in March 2021 when her video went viral on social media for exposing the differences between the women’s weight room on the NCAA Tournament bubble and the men’s, as well as the differences in the food. The video embarrassed tournament organizers and led to an apology — the New York Times a year later called it “The Video that Changed the NCAA” — and it led to changes in women’s basketball.

“Making these changes is incredible and I hope it continues, and not just because of a huge scandal and a player exposing them on a national stage,” Prince told AP in the aftermath. “Things shouldn’t be solved that way.”

More than three years later, Prince can look back on the uproar with context about the changes she helped bring about.

“The weight room videos were insane, something I didn’t expect as a 20-year-old kid,” Prince said.

The lawsuit

She was even younger in June 2020 when she and former Arizona State swimmer Grant House became the lead plaintiffs in the landmark antitrust case against the NCAA and the nation’s five largest conferences. Their main goal was to eliminate the rules against athletes making money based on the use of their names, images or likenesses – and a year later the NCAA paved the way for the NIL era in college athletics.

“I didn’t know this lawsuit would result in any financial gain for anyone,” she says now. “My biggest goal was to bring about change. When I wasn’t playing, I started creating my social media platform and it started to gain traction. I knew then that I could be a person to create this change, especially from the position I was in.

“I was approached to become a plaintiff in the lawsuit,” she added. “I educated myself on what NIL meant, what it is, how it could help, dove deep into this particular conversation and agreed to become a prosecutor.”

Prince was also part of a federal lawsuit, along with Duke football player Dewayne Carter and Stanford football player Nya Harrison, that sought to block the NCAA from enforcing rules banning compensation for athletes. The settlement announced in May is intended to address these concerns.

Prince said she envisions a future where schools can directly pay athletes what they’re worth — and those days appear to be coming quickly.

“NIL started as something completely different, now it’s turning into a paycheck for student-athletes,” she said. “It’s very different looking back. The way I made my NIL money was doing brand deals, now student athletes can get paid for playing for college. It’s cool to wonder where it will be next year.”

The last season

Prince spent a few years in Oregon before injuring her elbow and needing reconstructive surgery. The 6-foot-1 center later dropped out of school and moved to Los Angeles, thinking her college career was over.

Two weeks before the 2023 WNBA draft, which she filed, she saw that Oregon assistant Mark Campbell had taken the TCU head coaching job. She called him to see if she could play at the school, a few hours’ drive north of where she played as a high school player in Liberty Hill, Texas.

After a lot of paperwork, she enrolled at TCU, but broke a finger in fourteen games last season. After the operation she was sidelined for almost two months. Prince finished with averages of 19.7 points and 9.7 rebounds over 21 games.

“Last year at the end of the season I thought it was all over, but the NCAA called us and said you still had one year left,” she said.

Prince, who has played in just 70 games in six years, noted that two redshirt seasons and an additional COVID year gave her seven eligible seasons and that “finally all the pieces fell into place and I am exactly where I must be. and everything happens for a reason.”

TCU’s season opener is Tuesday at home against Houston Christian. Prince can’t wait, even though her legacy is already set, and she’s eager to prepare for the next WNBA draft with her hopes for a professional career.

“Being the player I want to be on the field, I haven’t been able to show that yet,” she said. “I have not been able to influence the game with my basketball game due to injuries, but off the court I have been able to boost the game and close the gap inch by inch.”

–Doug Feinberg | AP basketball writer