The Lynx landed a player who many thought would be a mid-first-round pick in the middle of the second round.

Talk about value.

With the 16^th pick in the 2020 WNBA Draft, the Lynx drafted UCONN point guard Crystal Dangerfield.

In 2019-20, Dangerfield averaged 14.9 points, 4.1 assists and 3.4 rebounds per game while shooting 41.6 percent from the 3-point line.

Dangerfield was teammates with Lynx forward Napheesa Collier from 2016-2019.

In fact, Collier might have lobbied a bit for Dangerfield to end up in Minnesota.

There was plenty of speculation that the Lynx would take a point guard in this draft, but the fact that it was Dangerfield and it wasn’t in the first round is a surprise.

“Well, we obviously like the idea of being able to have a point guard,” Lynx coach and GM Cheryl Reeve joked after the draft. “That’s something that most people thought we should have on the roster so we went ahead and thought at 16, that was great value.”

Dangerfield might not be a Day 1 starter for the Lynx. Lynx GM and head coach Cheryl Reeve said as much in her media availability this week, telling reporters that she’d be surprised if a rookie was her starting point guard in 2020.

But Dangerfield is a very smart player who should be able to handle back-up point guard minutes. She had just 52 turnovers as a senior, which is pretty exceptional considering she had the ball in her hands so much.

It’s also worth noting that the Lynx have done a pretty good job over the years of drafting players out of the UCONN program.

Dangerfield isn’t likely to be a player who lights the league on fire with her scoring, but her 3-point shot should transition well to the WNBA. Adding her shooting to a roster that already includes Lexie Brown and Rachel Banham should bode well.

“The idea that she can shoot it and Napheesa Collier has some comfort level with her, we were able to get some good intel there,” Reeve said. “ . . .  Probably the biggest thing is she’ll defend. She knows how to run an offense. UCONN players are largely plug and play and I think we’ve probably done as good as we can this offseason of adding shooting and so all of those things will help he have a chance to be successful.”

It is worth noting that making the WNBA is very hard. It’s no guarantee for any draft pick, let alone one taken in the second round. But then again, calling Dangerfield a second-round pick doesn’t seem right and I would imagine she’ll use that as motivation throughout her basketball career.

With the sixth-overall pick in the first round, the Lynx drafted forward Mikiah Herbert Harrigan.