Just after the season ended, Adia Barnes was linked to a guard who is transferring from Oklahoma State. While that has not come to fruition so far, there is a transfer between the two girls. Former Arizona reserve guard Anna Gret Así has announced that she is joining the Cowgirls next season.
Asi becomes the sixth of the seven players who entered to transfer portal to announce her destination. All except Semaj Smith have gone to other Power 5 conferences. All except Smith, Así, and Bendu Yeaney have gone to programs that were in last year’s NCAA Tournament.
Así came to Arizona as the highest-rated of the four commits in the 2021 class. ESPN HoopGurlz rated her as a 4.5 star player, although they did not rank her among their Top 100 because she was international. Before she got here, she and Adia Barnes decided that she would not play point guard, although that was how most recruiting services listed her.
Así did not see much time on the court for the Wildcats in her only season in Tucson. The Estonian guard appeared in just seven of Arizona’s 29 games. She averaged seven minutes per contest in those seven games but accounted for just 1.9 points and 0.7 rebounds per game. She also averaged 0.86 assists per game.
Her new team went just 9-20 overall and 3-15 in Big XII play last season. Seven of those conference losses were by single digits, though.
The only transfer who has yet to declare a new school is Derin Erdogan. While Erdogan formally entered the portal, she could always decide to return to her native Turkey and play there. A similar path was chosen by former Wildcat Mara Mote last year, and she is now playing for a club in her native Latvia.
The Wildcats have not officially added anyone to replace those who transferred out. The program has four highly-rated freshmen coming in, players that Barnes said she’s “all in with,” but there are still six scholarships available. The coach has said that she will not fill all six of them because it would take a really special situation for her to ever have 15 players again. She is planning to bring in three more to help her team return to the NCAA Tournament as a top 16 seed for the third straight season.
Leave a Reply