South Carolina women’s basketball linked to 4 top transfer portal players. What to know
Transfer portal activity is heating up for the South Carolina women’s basketball team, which enters the offseason with five open scholarship spots.
ESPN’s Alexa Philippou reported Wednesday that USC is among the 33 schools who’ve contacted former All-American DePaul forward Aneesah Morrow.
The Next’s Mitchell Northam reported Thursday that former Oregon guard Te-Hina Paopao and former Duke guard Shayeann Day-Wilson will be visiting Columbia “soon.”
And USC’s ties to the Blue Devils will only get stronger with Duke associate head coach Winston Gandy expected to join Dawn Staley’s South Carolina staff as an assistant, as the News & Observer reported Thursday.
Gandy’s hiring (which USC hasn’t confirmed) would give the Gamecocks an extra compelling pitch to both Day-Wilson and Celeste Taylor, who entered the transfer portal Wednesday. Day-Wilson was the ACC’s 2021-22 Freshman of the Year; Taylor, the team’s leading scorer, was an all-conference selection this year.
Under new NCAA rules instituted last summer, the spring transfer portal window for college women’s basketball opened Monday, March 13, the day after Selection Sunday.
The window runs for 45 days through April 26. Along with a Dec. 1-15 winter window, that’s the only time players can formally put their name in the online transfer portal database, though they’re free to commit to a school outside of that window once they’re formally in the portal. Players can also declare their intent to enter the portal at any time.
Transfer portal usage has exploded thanks to a new NCAA rule allowing all athletes to transfer once without having to sit out a season at their new school and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 waiver, which gave anyone who competed in 2020-21 an extra year of eligibility. Graduate transfers can also transfer without sitting out. There are over 1,000 players in the portal as of Thursday, per ESPN.
Due to its recent success, South Carolina has one of the stronger national pitches to transfers such as Morrow, Paopao, Day-Wilson and Taylor seeking a new home.
Over the past four seasons, the Gamecocks have gone 129-9 with three SEC regular-season and tournament titles apiece, three consecutive Final Four appearances and, of course, a 2022 national championship (Staley’s second, with the first coming in 2017).
South Carolina just wrapped a memorable 2022-23 season that featured a school-record 36 wins and Final Four appearance in Dallas earlier this month (where USC lost to Iowa).
The Gamecocks also set a program record Monday with five players selected in the 2023 WNBA Draft, including star forward Aliyah Boston, who went No. 1 overall to the Indiana Fever.
But with Boston, Laeticia Amihere, Zia Cooke, Brea Beal and Victaria Saxton all getting drafted — and Kierra Fletcher and Olivia Thompson exhausting their eligibility — South Carolina is losing seven scholarship players (half of the 14-player roster it maintained for 2022-23).
Even with three freshmen (including local five-star guard Milaysia Fulwiley) enrolling this summer, South Carolina only has 10 scholarships returners, barring any transfers out of the program. That gives USC up to five more scholarships to dole out, if it chooses. The maximum for a Division I women’s college basketball team is 15.
ESPN ranks Morrow, of DePaul, as the No. 2 player available in the transfer portal behind Louisville guard Hailey Van Lith. Morrow averaged 21.9 points and a nation-best 13.9 rebounds per game as a freshman and jumped up to 25.7 points (No. 4 nationally) and 12.2 rebounds per game as a sophomore this season.
The 6-foot-1 Morrow was a two-time All Big East selection and has also drawn interest from reigning national champion LSU, Notre Dame, Iowa, Maryland and Ole Miss, per ESPN.
ESPN also thinks highly of the other three transfer portal targets linked to South Carolina. On its list of top 35 transfers, Duke’s Taylor is No. 6, Oregon’s Paopao is No. 7 and Duke’s Day-Wilson is No. 9.
Staley has used the transfer portal selectively yet effectively in recent seasons. Former Syracuse center Kamilla Cardoso is entering her third season with the program and was the SEC’s Sixth Woman of the Year, while former Georgia Tech guard Kierra Fletcher was a starter most of this season.
The Gamecocks added Kaela Davis (Georgia Tech) and Allisha Gray (North Carolina) ahead of the 2015-16 season, but they had to sit out as season under old NCAA rules. Both were major contributors to the USC’s first national championship in 2017.
