Spanish basketball player
María Teresa Cazorla Medina[a] (born 18 June 1997), known as Maite Cazorla, is a Spanish professional basketball player for the Perfumerias Avenida of Liga Endesa and the Spanish women's national basketball team. She was drafted with the twenty third overall pick in the 2019 WNBA draft.[1]
Youth career
Coming from a family of professional basketball players,[2] Cazorla started playing basketball at 14 with her school team Teresianas before joining the youth system of CB Islas Canarias. At the age of 14 she left the Canary Islands and moved Barcelona to continue her development in the youth teams of Segle XXI in 2011.
She progressed in the club, playing in the Spanish second-tier league and the Spanish national youth teams until her performance in the 2014 FIBA Under-17 World Championship for Women caught the eye of the Oregon Ducks scouts.[3]
College career
Cazorla attended the University of Oregon from 2015 to 2019. She played all four years, and was named to the Pac-12 All-Freshman team in 2015. She was named to the All-Pac-12 team in her Junior and Senior years. In 2019, she played with the team that made it to the Final Four.[4] In total, Cazorla played in 146 games for the Ducks over her four-year career. Cazorla was the eighth player from Oregon selected in the WNBA Draft.[5]
Oregon statistics
Source[6]
| Year
|
Team
|
GP
|
Points
|
FG%
|
3P%
|
FT%
|
RPG
|
APG
|
SPG
|
BPG
|
PPG
|
| 2015-16
|
Oregon
|
35
|
410
|
44.8%
|
39.4%
|
73.8%
|
2.5
|
5.9
|
1.9
|
0.1
|
11.7
|
| 2016-17
|
Oregon
|
36
|
291
|
39.9%
|
34.9%
|
82.1%
|
1.4
|
3.9
|
1.3
|
0.1
|
8.1
|
| 2017-18
|
Oregon
|
37
|
403
|
48.6%
|
38.9%
|
83.3%
|
2.4
|
4.8
|
1.4
|
0.2
|
10.9
|
| 2018-19
|
Oregon
|
38
|
370
|
49.6%
|
41.2%
|
81.1%
|
1.4
|
4.3
|
1.1
|
0.2
|
9.7
|
| Career
|
146
|
1474
|
45.7%
|
38.9%
|
79.0%
|
1.9
|
4.7
|
1.4
|
0.1
|
10.1
|
WNBA career
Cazorla made her WNBA debut on May 31, 2019, in a game versus the Seattle Storm. She totaled 3 points in her 5 minutes in the game.[7]
Club career
Back in Spain, in June 2019, she signed for CB Avenida,[8] one of the top teams of the Spanish top-tier league, winning her first title in 2020, the Spanish Queen's Cup and participating in the 2019-20 EuroCup Women.
European Cups statistics
In her debut season in international club competitions, she has played 10 games in the 2019–20 EuroCup Women, averaging 19.2 MPG and 4.4 PPG.[9]
National team
Cazorla started playing with Spain's youth teams at 14, winning a total of seven medals from 2012 to 2017. Her highlights on these teams include a European U16 title in 2013, a runner-up finish at the U17 FIBA World Championships in 2014, and a third-place finish at the U19 FIBA World Championships in 2015.[4][10] She made her debut with the senior team in 2019, when she was 22 years old. Up to 2021, she had 19 caps and participated in the 2020 Olympics and the 2021 EuroBasket.[11]
