Correspondent file photo / Robert Hayes Then-Youngstown State freshman Nneka Obiazor goes up for a shot in the paint against Purdue Fort Wayne in 2021 at the Beeghly Center. Obiazor is one of YSU’s newcomers after transferring to rejoin the Penguins for the upcoming season.

YOUNGSTOWN — In today’s era of college basketball, player movement via the transfer portal each season is the new reality, particularly for schools at the mid-major level.

More than 1,500 women’s basketball players entered the portal after the end of the 2024-2025 season, which is about 30% of the total number of women’s players on college rosters this past season, according to On3 and Front Office Sports.

However, Youngstown State has been able to buck the trend this offseason.

The Penguins’ main priority after their season-ending loss on March 4 was to retain its core group of eligible returning players, which included Horizon League Freshman of the Year Sophia Gregory, Faith Burch, Bella Samz, Sarah Baker, Ashlynn Van Tassell, Dacia Lewandowski, Erica King, Danielle Cameron and Hayden Barrier.

Despite losing Abby Liber and Xoe Rosalez for non-basketball reasons, YSU was able to keep that entire returning core intact.

“I don’t know if there’s a secret sauce to it, but first and foremost, we have great young women in our program,” head coach Melissa Jackson said in an interview on Tuesday. “They chose YSU for multiple reasons, but I think they love our campus, they love our coaches and I think they love what we’re building here. They really bought into that, and they have some goals and aspirations that they want to finish. Honestly, it was a lot of easy conversations at the end of the year, and I think that stems from the character of the student-athletes we have in our program.”

In addition to retaining that group, the YSU coaching staff has added three players from the transfer portal to replace Jewel Watkins, Malia Magestro and Haley Thierry, who have graduated and exhausted their eligibility.

The first is a familiar face that those in the YSU community might be familiar with: Grand Canyon transfer Nneka Obiazor, who won Horizon League Freshman of the Year when she played for the Penguins in 2020-2021.

“As soon as she went in the portal, (assistant coach) Shayna (Orcutt-Gore) got on the phone with her and they had an immediate connection,” Jackson said. “So I credit Shayna, who is our recruiting coordinator, for that initial spark and initial conversation. Nneka loved her time at YSU and she was very open and honest about that.”

During her one season at YSU, Obiazor averaged 15.3 points and 8.1 rebounds per game, before spending three seasons at UNLV and last year at Grand Canyon. Her career averages across five seasons of college basketball are 10.8 points and 5.4 rebounds per game.

“We want her to be a big guard for us — we want her to play on the perimeter, but obviously we’re also going to post her up because she’s got some great strength and great size,” Jackson said. “Nneka is very competitive and she wants to win.”

The second transfer addition is Florida Gulf Coast guard Casey Santoro, an Ohio native, who played high school basketball at Bellevue and spent her first three seasons at Kent State, before playing the last two at FGCU.

During her first season at FGCU, she experienced a season-ending injury early on in 2023-2024, but she bounced back last year to average 4.3 points in 17.8 minutes per game for an Eagles team that won the Atlantic Sun and made the NCAA tournament.

As an experienced ball handler and shooter, the YSU coaching staff expects her to fit into the point guard position. Santoro will join the Penguins this summer after posting career averages of 7.5 points, 2.7 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game.

“In what our needs were, the No. 1 priority was a point guard and bringing in a point guard with great experience and somebody that really wanted that position and wanted to come in and run a team,” Jackson said. “I knew her very well from playing against her at Kent when I was at Akron. … When I got on the phone with her, we had an immediate connection, and that’s really important for me — the head coach-point guard relationship. So I’m really excited about her, and I think we hit a home run with bringing Casey here for her final year.”

The third portal addition is another familiar face in Cleveland State forward Paulina Hernandez, who unlike Obiazor and Santoro, will have two years of eligibility remaining.

She played with Samz on the same high school AAU team together, and at 6-foot-2, Hernandez adds to the Penguins’ already-considerable size and depth in the front court. She averaged about five minutes and played in 55 games during her two seasons on a deep, experienced Vikings squad.

“It’s great to know these players and have had some experience with them, obviously coached her at Cleveland State, and she really fit what we needed from a depth standpoint in the post,” Jackson said. “She’s so long, mobile and she’s so athletic. But what I also love about her is her ability to step out and shoot the three. Anybody that knows me well, knows I like my post players to be able to do that.”

YSU’s fourth roster addition comes from the high school level in Brooke Adkins, a 6-foot guard/forward that was part of the Wayne (W.Va.) team that just won the Class AAA state championship in West Virginia this spring.

“Brooke is so versatile and she’s got great size and great strength too,” Jackson said. “With her versatility defensively, she’ll be able to do a lot of different things. Then offensively, she runs a system with the WV Thunder (AAU) team that we run, so it shouldn’t be too much of a learning curve. She reminds me a lot of Nneka when you look at those two players, and I’m excited for Brooke to be able to learn from Nneka this year.”

Jackson added that she’s looking forward to seeing how the newcomers will play together with the Penguins’ returning group when they all get back to campus in the summer.

“That’s the fun part of these next couple months and what that’s going to look like,” Jackson said. “My job is to put them in the best position to be successful.”

INJURY UPDATE

Baker, Cameron and Van Tassell each sustained season-ending injuries this past season, and Jackson said Tuesday that each of them are on-track in their respective recovery processes.

Each of their injuries required surgery, but Jackson said Baker and Van Tassell should be back and ready to go during summer workouts and practices.

However, because Cameron’s injury occurred later than Van Tassell’s and was more severe than Baker’s, Jackson added that she won’t be able to return until right around the start of the season in the fall.

“Slowly, we’ll get (them) back up to speed and where we want (them) to be,” Jackson said.

OTHER TIDBITS

Jackson said Tuesday that assistant coach Peyton Booth decided to step away from coaching at the end of the season, adding that she hopes to fill the staff vacancy in the coming weeks.

Also, while the Penguins didn’t lose any scholarship players to the transfer portal, Liber and Rosalez have both decided to voluntarily step away from college basketball.

Liber finished her degree and graduated this month after averaging 2.7 points and 3.9 boards in about 16 minutes per game this season. Meanwhile, Rosalez’s decision came just this week after she returned home to Texas after the end of the semester — opting to stay closer to home to finish her degree.

That leaves the Penguins with two possible scholarship openings available to fill over the next couple months.

“We weren’t actively recruiting, but we are now looking back at the portal. But it’s gotta be the right fit,” Jackson said. “Like I told my staff today, I feel really good about the 13 that we have. I feel good about our culture and I feel good about our locker room, but our talent level is really high and at a level that I think we can compete for a Horizon League championship.”