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Liberty guard Pauline Astier makes WNBA All-Rookie Team
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- Liberty guard Pauline Astier makes WNBA All-Rookie Team
Pauline Astier got recognized as one of the WNBA's best rookies.
The Liberty guard was named to the 2026 WNBA All-Rookie Team, the league announced Wednesday. The selection — made by a panel consisting of 74 sportswriters and broadcasters — made the French rookie the ninth player in Liberty history to earn All-Rookie honors.
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Media members awarded Astier and Toronto Tempo guard Kiki Rice with the same amount of votes, giving them both the honor to make the six-woman All-Rookie Team.
Dallas' Azzi Fudd, Seattle's Flau'jae Johnson, Minnesota's Olivia Miles and Chicago's Sydney Taylor round out the entire All-Rookie Team, which usually features five honorees.
Astier earned enough votes to make the squad after averaging 9.3 points, 2.7 rebounds and 3.3 assists for the Liberty this season.
The guard didn't expect to have such an impact on the Liberty after coming into training camp with no prior WNBA experience. But her play helped propel the team to a semifinals berth in the WNBA playoffs.
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"I wasn't expecting to play that much and everything but I'm still a competitor," Astier said in her exit interview after the Liberty got swept by the Atlanta Dream last week . She ended up logging 23.3 minutes per game during the regular season.
"I wasn't expecting this but I'm really happy of the way I was playing for the team and the way I helped the team," she added of her debut WNBA season.
She started 39 games (44 appearances) on a championship-hopeful Liberty team after arriving in Brooklyn from USK Praha, a professional basketball club in the Czech Republic.
Astier's downhill drives and ability to finish at the rim kept her a mainstay in Chris DeMarco's lineup. And she earned the selection despite having less usage than other honorees on rebuilding teams.
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Astier finished the season with a .635 true shooting percentage, the highest by any rookie in WNBA history with at least 200 field goal attempts, surpassing the .629 mark Cynthia Cooper-Dyke set in 1997, per the Liberty.
The French woman's selection gives the Liberty its first WNBA All-Rookie selection since Leonie Fiebich (2024).
