"An air of excitement": How Ashlee Hannan rediscovered a love of the game and earned a WNBL call-up

The Perth Lynx rookie has returned to the sport with a new focus, and a more balanced outlook.

Credit: @DiscoveryOne_Photography / NBL1

A few years ago, Ashlee Hannan was among the brightest young post prospects in Australian basketball. She had been part of the 2018 FIBA U17 World Championship team that won a bronze medal in Belarus and spent two years at the Centre of Excellence (CoE) alongside the likes of Jade Melbourne, Gemma Potter and Shaneice Swain. She was recruited by the University of Texas Longhorns, a program coming off four straight appearances in the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16.

Tall, athletic and with a sporting pedigree (her mother Fiona won bronze with the Opals at the 1996 Olympics, before representing Australia in handball at Sydney 2000), Hannan seemed to have the world at her feet.

But somewhere along the line, basketball had stopped being enjoyable, and she decided to take a break from the sport. “I took considerable time away to really explore other avenues in life and work on different aspects of myself,” she tells The Pick and Roll.

“But I gradually felt like something was missing. The hunger for the game and the drive to complete and just play again brought me back, so I thought, why not give it a second chance?”

This past NBL1 season, she returned to action with the Albury-Wodonga Bandits. Now, she’s rediscovered her love of the game and has progressed quickly into professional senior basketball, signing a contract with the Perth Lynx for the 23/24 season.

While basketball once seemed like a job, Hannan now has a different perspective on the sport. “All athletes are different, and some really thrive on basketball being the primary thing in their life, but for me personally, I think it’s super important to have something outside of basketball. Having that balance in life is what works for me and gets the best out of me.”

She’s found interests outside the game and particularly enjoys spending time outdoors, lapping up the sun and sand in her new home city and going on hikes and adventures with her pet Groodle.

Hannan’s second coming as a basketballer got off to a productive start at Albury-Wodonga, where her team played home games at the Lauren Jackson Sports Centre. While the GOAT of Australian basketball was rehabilitating rather than playing the past NBL1 season, she was sometimes around to offer guidance to Hannan and company. “We interacted with her a few times,” Hannan says of Jackson. “She’s definitely been an inspiration, the way she’s made a comeback. She’s obviously an amazing player, someone I look up to and just a great mentor to have.”

Despite initially feeling short of match fitness, Hannan had an auspicious return season, putting up 13.5 points and 8.4 rebounds per game and enjoying some monster stat lines, including 15 points and 16 rebounds against a Sydney Comets team featuring familiar names like Shyla Heal and Vanessa Panousis, and a 23 point, 22 rebound double-double against Hornsby Ku-Ring-Gai in just her second game back. While she says she doesn’t focus on shot blocking, Hannan used her height (192cm) and length well as a rim protector, collecting 1.26 blocks per game, placing her fifth in this category in the NBL1 East. She also set solid screens and rolled hard to the rim, became an effective lob target and displayed some touch from outside, connecting on 13 of 35 (37.1%) shots from three-point range.

Playing in a team that embraced switching and prized defensive versatility, Hannan enjoyed the challenge of guarding multiple positions. “We were trying to mix it up a little bit, and I’d been trying to develop my game beyond your standard four or five; I’d like to be more mobile and more of a stretch four. For the most part, I was defending a centre or four man, but there were times when I was a defending a three or their wing players.”

This coming WNBL season, Hannan says she’ll be a good fit for Ryan Petrik’s offence at the Lynx. Inspired by the ‘seven seconds or less’ philosophy of Mike D’Antoni, Petrik has implemented a high-octane, pace and space offence at Perth, and Hannan sees the system as an ideal fit. “That’s something we want to work on as a team, we want to be the fastest. That definitely suits my game as I like to be quite mobile, and can shoot it from outside the arc.”

Petrik knows how to get the most out of bigs playing an expansive role; just last season, he oversaw the incredible evolution of Lauren Scherf into a do-it-all playmaker and multi-level scorer. Hannan says Petrik has mentioned Scherf’s stellar year as a model for how her game could develop.

“He spoke about that sort of point centre position she played and how she thrived in that [role] and had an outstanding season. I think it will take me a while to get to that level, but it’s something I would love to strive for in the coming years, and this is the right program for me to have a good start.”

Still just 22, Hannan has had an unorthodox path to the WNBL but is now revitalised and fizzing with optimism ahead of her first season in the league. “Preseason has been going really well; everyone is super lovely and gets along, and we’ve gelled pretty well,” she says. “It’s looking good – there’s an air of excitement about us.”

This story is supported by the WNBL. Visit the official WNBL website at wnbl.basketball for all the latest news.