One day during the Connecticut Sun’s preseason training camp this spring, the Harvard coaching staff made the roughly two-hour drive from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Uncasville, Connecticut. They went there to support 2025 graduate Harmoni Turner, who was trying to make her first WNBA roster. After practice, they had lunch with her and ended up talking for four or five hours.
“She came straight from overseas right into training camp, and I did that before as a player, so I know how draining that can be,” Harvard head coach Carrie Moore told The IX Basketball in June. “… So just to see some familiar faces … I think she needed it.”
It’s been a long road in professional basketball for Turner, even though it’s only been 15 months since she was drafted 35th overall to the Las Vegas Aces. She has been waived twice in the WNBA, played overseas and been part of the UPSHOT League’s inaugural season. But she’s still hoping that a WNBA team will give her an opportunity to stick around someday.
“[I’m] still waiting on that one … opportunity from a team that takes a chance on me fully,” Turner told The IX Basketball in June, “and understanding that I’m always here to learn and always willing to get better, but also knowing how special I am as a player.”
Turner spent her draft night in April 2025 in her hometown of Mansfield, Texas. She had a watch party at her high school, Mansfield Legacy. When her name was called late in the third round, she put her head in her hands and started crying. “I was so grateful,” she said. “I felt like I’d earned it.”
Meanwhile, her Harvard coaches and teammates were watching the draft at Moore’s house. They held their breath throughout the third round and exploded with joy when her name flashed across the screen.
“Everyone just erupted, and people [were] just standing and jumping on my couch and running around my living room,” Moore said.
That moment capped the Crimson’s extraordinary 2024-25 season, which had produced the program’s first-ever Ivy League Tournament title and its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2007. Turner became just the second player ever to be drafted directly out of Harvard, joining Allison Feaster in 1998.
Moore knew better than most what Turner was walking into. As a player, she’d been in training camps with the Phoenix Mercury and Chicago Sky but didn’t make the opening-night rosters. Before Turner left for training camp, Moore reminded her to lean on the three C’s that the Crimson emphasize: communication, coachability and competition.
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In her introductory press conference in Las Vegas, Turner was asked how she planned to approach training camp, playing alongside stars like A’ja Wilson and Chelsea Gray. “I think just going in there with a fearless mentality, going in there with a dog mentality,” Turner told reporters. “… Soaking it in, being a sponge, learning from the best, I feel like that’s the best way you can elevate.”
However, Turner was cut about a week before the season opener. Looking back, she said she didn’t feel like she fit well with the Aces, but she learned a lot from her first professional experience.
“I think she left wanting more, and/or another opportunity where she felt like she could really be herself and … make an impact,” Moore said. “And maybe that wasn’t necessarily the place for her, but I think it was a great, eye-opening experience, for sure.”
It took some time for Turner, the 2025 Ivy League Player of the Year and Her Hoop Stats’ 2025 Mid-Major Player of the Year, to process falling short in Las Vegas. It felt like her dream had slipped right through her fingers. Some days, she was devastated, and other days she was angry.
It didn’t help that the news was everywhere.
“When I got cut from two teams, nobody really knew what was going on,” Moore said. “… These guys, they get cut, and it’s all over social media. … So it becomes this thing that you have to recover from, not just privately, but also publicly, and you have to pull yourself back up.”
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About three weeks after she was cut, Turner put on a brave face for her Harvard graduation, feeling like she needed to show people that she was OK. But she wasn’t, and eventually she decided to show that side of things, too.
In late June 2025, she posted a tearful video on social media, allowing people to see, hear and feel what she was feeling. She admitted that she wasn’t always sure why she was still training, but a tiny part of her believed she’d figure that out. Ultimately, she wanted kids who look up to her — including girls she has mentored through her nonprofit, Pretty ‘N Secure — to know that even their role models have setbacks and moments of doubt and that it’s OK to feel that way sometimes.
“I wanted them to understand how human I am,” she told The IX Basketball about a year later. “You can work for something and fail miserably at it, but it’s OK. It’s just about getting up and adjusting [and] going back to the drawing board. … I’m happy that I was that vulnerable.”
Turner struggled all summer to process what had happened in training camp. In some ways, it still affects her now, more than a year later.
“I was really depressed. It was very hard and difficult,” she said. “I felt so alone, and honestly, I was putting one foot in front of the other, but I was feeling like shit every day. So I couldn’t really give you a timeline on when things were starting to look upright, because even now, I’m just still kind of in that. … I think the first waive kind of triggered it a little bit, and then just feeling like you’re failing a lot.”
However, when Turner was with the Aces, the French team Landerneau Bretagne Basket had reached out to express interest in signing her for the 2025-26 season. So she still had an opportunity ahead of her — in France’s top league, no less.
Turner played in 24 games for Landerneau from October 2025 through April 2026, averaging 15.5 points, 6.6 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 1.7 steals per game. She led her team in each of those categories and was named to Eurobasket.com’s All-French League second team.
Turner scored in double figures in all but two games for Landerneau. She had her first double-double in just her third game, totaling 11 points, 12 rebounds, four steals and three assists. And arguably her best performance came in late December, when she put up 32 points, nine assists and six rebounds in 34 minutes.
“[Landerneau] gave her an opportunity where she was needed,” Moore said. “I think they wanted her for sure, but I think they needed a player like her. She was able to play the way that she did for us and have the ball in her hands and be really impactful and dynamic and make plays for herself, but also for others on her team.”
In France, Turner worked on being more physical and absorbing contact. As a smaller shooting guard, she knew she’d need that in the WNBA, and the international game allowing more contact gave her the perfect training ground.
“As an American going overseas in France, [the refs are] not gonna give you a lot of calls,” she said. “… So I kind of just flipped it into a glass half full situation and just understood, like, ‘Hey, [I’m] still trying out for the W. I still need to up my physicality anyway. So how about just maneuver through this physicality and try to punch back?’ And I feel like, if anything, that’s what helped me not only physically, but mentally as well, just adjusting to that and still getting buckets.”
While Turner was acclimating to a new country, she was also figuring out new routines as a professional, such as where she’d get meals from and how she’d fill her time off the court without college classes. Landerneau, a relatively small town about six hours west of Paris, was a good fit for her because she wasn’t “super overwhelmed” by options like she might’ve been in a huge city in Year 1.
The size of the town also meant that she and her team were one of the main attractions. She told the team president that she wanted to get out in the community and be involved, and she visited several local schools despite barely speaking any French. And the fans quickly embraced Turner and the slogan she’d started at Harvard, “Nerds can hoop, too.”
“I saw tons of photos and videos of her team wearing the shirts to support the cause and fans wearing those shirts to the games,” Moore said.
Turner will return to Landerneau in 2026-27 — and this time, she’ll team up with another Ivy Leaguer, 2026 Columbia graduate Susie Rafiu.
“Your first year’s always a bit of a transition year,” Moore said. “… It takes you a while, especially overseas, to learn the language, settle in just socially and personally. And I think going back [for] a second year will just allow her to really hit the ground running and really tap into how good of a pro she can be. … So I’m really excited for her, and I think it gives her … a North Star of like, ‘This is my next thing.’”
Turner’s season in Landerneau ended in the league quarterfinals on April 11, and she quickly returned to the United States to open training camp with the Sun on April 19. In her second stint in a WNBA camp, she felt more prepared, and she felt like Connecticut was a better fit than Las Vegas had been.
However, Turner was waived on May 4, four days before the season opener. She’d missed a few days of practice with illness, which didn’t help, and she was also playing point guard at times.
“She doesn’t choose to play as a point overseas — she plays more [the shooting] guard position — but it’s what we needed today,” Sun head coach Rachid Meziane told reporters after a preseason game on May 3. “… So I can understand that it’s hard for her, especially at this level. But her energy and how sometimes she can change a game … that’s something positive.”
“She brought a lot of energy,” veteran Sun center Brittney Griner told The IX Basketball on July 2. “Every single time we challenged her or told her to do something, needed her to do something, she wanted to do it. … We had to hold her [out of] practice a couple times, and it was killing her. She was trying everything, inching, fighting to get back out there, and the first day she was back … she was on the floor diving for balls.
“I just hate that we couldn’t keep her … but I definitely think we’ll see Harmoni again. She was a joy. She was one of the ones I really, really, really, really, really enjoyed being around.”
Turner left Connecticut with her head held high and no regrets about how she’d played. And another opportunity was just around the corner in the inaugural season of the UPSHOT League. She played in her first game for the Savannah Steel on May 15 and averaged 12.5 points, 4.8 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 1.6 steals in 16 games. She also scored at least 27 points twice, including a 29-point, 10-rebound game in just 30 minutes on June 26.
“I feel like [rebounding is] something that I don’t really get a lot of credit for, so I just really wanted to make a huge emphasis on that,” Turner said less than a week before that double-double. “Everyone knows I can score, but I just definitely wanted to broadcast other parts of my game as well, and because … I haven’t really been hitting shots that I normally hit. I don’t really hang my head on that. I just kind of focus on other things that I can control.”
However, Turner’s time with UPSHOT ended on July 5, when she was waived for medical reasons. The silver lining is she now has a break before heading back to France, after playing basically nonstop since September.
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For Turner, her pro career has been all about finding the right fit. She’s more comfortable at shooting guard than point guard, but she knows her smaller build and her style of play make her somewhat “unorthodox” there at the pro level.
She’ll either need to find a team that needs her playmaking and scoring at shooting guard or transition to point guard.
“That’s a mental shift,” Moore said. “So she’s got to find that mental, I think, flexibility to be able to take over at times and make big plays, but also, some of these W teams don’t need you to do that. They’ve got veterans, they’ve got established wings and scorers and forwards, so they just need you to get the ball to the right people at the right times. And so for her, it’s really trying to figure that out.”
This isn’t an unfamiliar fork in the road for Turner. When Moore arrived at Harvard after Turner’s first year, Moore initially wanted her to play point guard. But when Lydia Chatira arrived as a first-year ahead of Turner’s senior season, Chatira took over as the starting point guard and Turner moved off the ball.
It’s also familiar to Moore, who went through the same thing as a player after leading Division I in scoring as a senior at Western Michigan.
“I led the nation in scoring, but when I got to the W, they didn’t care anything about it,” she said. “They were like, ‘We need you to be a point guard,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m not a point guard!’ So there’s a little bit of kind of that identity crisis.”
Moore said she ultimately couldn’t make that transition, but she believes Turner can. She listed areas of the game that she thinks Turner is better at than she was, including ball-handling, play-making and using ball screens.
For now, Turner is continuing to play the game she loves wherever she can. It’s been a difficult road since leaving Harvard, but she’d much rather keep chasing her WNBA dream than wonder what might’ve happened if she did. When she needs a boost, she reminds herself that these setbacks will make her eventual success story more powerful and more relatable.
“I’m just trusting that, even in the midst of all this hardship that’s going on,” Turner said. “And … [I’m] still trucking.”
The IX Basketball’s Natalie Heavren contributed reporting for this story.
