Is she expected to be good enough to play? I remember being stoked when Louann Battiston announced for Duke.
Hard to say. For girls basketball -- not just Wikstrøm's former U18 team -- FIBA
ranks Norway 34th among 46 European teams, and 74th worldwide. I guess that could say something about the country's talent pipeline?
I found a separate
FIBA player page for Wikstrøm with game-by-game stats from the U18 Eurobasket tournament in August 2024. In 7 games, she was her team's leading scorer, averaging 15.4 points. Their record was 2-5. (The
video I posted above are her highlights from these games.) Without knowing anything about her team or the level of competition, I can't draw any conclusions here.
One thing I did notice is that she plays club basketball for the Ulriken Eagles (jersey #25), and that team won the BLNO 2025 women's championship over the Asker Aliens back in April. They swept the first 2 games in a best-of-3 series. Here are the
highlights.
I'm pretty sure Christopher Nolan directed this video, because it's edited out of chronological order. We see the final score of the second game about 3 minutes in. I could not tell you if we're watching parts of two games or one. In the celebration at the end, Wikstrøm holds a tiny trophy in the team photo op and is getting interviewed on TV.
What I can tell you is that Eurobasket has box scores for
Game 1 (March 29) and
Game 2 (April 1). Wikstrøm had 19 points (5-13 FG, 1-5 3PT, 8-8 FT), 8 rebounds, 6 assists, 1 steal, and 1 block in the first game, and 15 points (6-17 FG, 0-3 3PT, 3-5 FT), 4 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals, and 1 block in the second game.
If it helps provide context, two of the players in these games used to play in the NCAA. Wikstrøm's teammate Stine Austgulen is 12 years older -- she's the one holding the baby in the celebration -- and used to play for Colorado State (2013-2018,
stats from Sports Reference), where she started as a junior and senior. In the BLNO title games, she led the team in points both times, scoring 20 and 18.
One of the Asker Aliens players, Natalie Villaflor, is American. She played college ball more recently, from 2018-2022 mostly as a reserve for Robert Morris, and 2022-2023 as a starter at Mount St. Mary's (
stats).
