Notre Dame women’s basketball officially adds Texas transfer to roster
It’s mid-May, but it’s still a busy time of year for Notre Dame women’s basketball. The Fighting Irish officially added two players to the 2022-23 roster Monday.
First, it was Oregon transfer Kylee Watson. Then it was Texas transfer Lauren Ebo. Both are 6-4 post players, a position of need for the Irish after the departures of Maya Dodson to the WNBA and Sam Brunelle to Virginia via the transfer portal.
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Ebo has one year of eligibility remaining. She started her career at Penn State but spent the past two seasons at Texas. In total, she has played 116 games at the collegiate level with 59 career starts. She’s the type of veteran presence Notre Dame badly needed after bidding farewell to Dodson.
There are some athletic limitations with Ebo that weren’t there with Dodson, though. She’s bigger and can’t run the floor as well. She has also averaged less than one block per game in every season except for one — her true freshman campaign with the Nittany Lions in 2018-19. And even in that season, Ebo averaged exactly one block per game. Dodson averaged 2.76 blocks per game last season. That ranked eighth nationally.
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Notre Dame isn’t asking Ebo to be Dodson, though. The Irish are instead asking Watson and Ebo to form some sort of formidable tandem down low. Ebo can pull her own weight in that regard. A Texas team that went to the Elite Eight for the second-straight season counted on Ebo to start 30 of 35 games. She averaged 8.0 points and 6.7 rebounds in 26.5 minutes per game.
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Ebo played a large role in Texas winning the Big 12 Tournament championship for the first time since 2003, too. It’s the success in big moments that has Notre Dame head coach Niele Ivey excited about adding Ebo. The Irish have reasonable championship aspirations of their own after making it to the Sweet 16 in March. Ebo knows what it’s like to win.
“She brings a wealth of experience with deep runs in the NCAA Tournament the past two years,” Ivey said. “She is a true leader on and off the court. She’s a force inside and is a perfect fit for our team and our culture.”
Notre Dame assistant coach Coquese Washington was the head coach at Penn State when Ebo started her career there. There is an established chemistry component as a result. It remains to be seen how she fits in on the floor, but Notre Dame is confident it has added another player who is going to contribute in a big way.
