Notre Dame women’s basketball scholarship chart
Notre Dame has some wiggle room, to say the least.
The Fighting Irish began the 2021-22 season with 10 scholarship players. Naturally, that number is set to dwindle as time goes on. Three players — Abby Prohaska, Anaya Peoples and Sam Brunelle — from last year’s roster entered the transfer portal. Two of them, Peoples and Brunelle, already announced which new programs they’ll play for. Additionally, Maya Dodson was selected No. 26 overall in last week’s WNBA Draft.
That leaves head coach Niele Ivey with just six scholarship players returning, and that’s if Katlyn Gilbert comes back for a fifth season — which seems unlikely. Gilbert did not play post-Christmas last season. She sat out the final 28 games of the season for “personal reasons.” Incoming freshman KK Bransford will arrive over the summer, though, so Ivey will have six players to work with at minimum.
Notre Dame is going to have to make use of the transfer portal to flesh out the 2022-23 roster. There cannot be a mass exodus of players leaving without a substantial influx. There just isn’t any other way around it. Typically, the transfer well is harder to sift through for the Irish with more rigorous academic standards than other schools.
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Ivey is going to have to look for graduates or transfer candidates with immediate eligibility, too. Players who have to sit out a year to abide by the NCAA’s transfer policies won’t do her much good. Even with the one-time transfer rule allowing players to move freely from one school to another without penalty, there are a multitude of players in the portal who have already transferred once and have to sit out the upcoming season. Hence, the portal is saturated with undergraduate players who are not able to play in their first year with new programs unless they’re granted an eligibility waiver by the NCAA. Notre Dame has already had bad luck with such waivers once this offseason; Dodson applied for one hoping to get one more year of experience at the collegiate level, but she was denied.
All of that to say this: Notre Dame is in a sticky situation with its women’s basketball roster heading into the 2022-23 season. There is plenty to build off from last month’s run to the Sweet 16 with four of five starters — Olivia Miles, Sonia Citron, Dara Mabrey and Maddy Westbeld — returning, but there are plenty of issues too. As it stands, the Irish don’t have a starting center with the departure of Dodson. And they only have one or two bench players; Bransford for sure, and Gilbert if she has a change of heart.
Here’s a look at the Notre Dame women’s basketball scholarship chart through the 2024-25 season.
