Arizona Wildcat reserve guard Courtney Blakely has entered college basketball's transfer portal.
Blakely's portal status was reported Thursday by wbbblog.com and confirmed later in the day by Arizona coach Adia Barnes.
Wednesday was the final day that basketball players could enter the transfer portal.
Blakely, who was a reserve guard for the Wildcats last season, averaged 4.8 points, 1.4 assists, 1.3 rebounds and 1.1 steals per game in 17 minutes of action. She transferred into UA from Middle Tennessee State after playing two seasons for the Blue Raiders.
At Bishop Noll High School near Gary, Indiana, she was known as an offensive star, scoring 2,324 points — more than any male or female who played basketball at the school. She averaged 23 points as a junior, 20 as a senior.
But in college, she turned into a tenancious defensive stopper. Barnes said that “Courtney is like that itch in the middle of your back that you can’t reach. You have to find someone to scratch it.”
Blakely joins two other former Wildcats who left after the season ended — Sali Kourouma, who ended up at Oregon and Kailyn Gilbert, who left the program in February and ended up at LSU.
During a stretch of the 2023-24 season where Gilbert was first missing from the UA lineup in late January to mid February, Blakely's minutes increased significantly. She played 32 minutes and scored a season-high 24 points on 11-of-20 shooting on Jan. 28 at home against Stanford. A week later she added 10 points in 27 minutes against ASU. In a four-game February stretch that saw the Wildcats go 3-1 with a triple-overtime win over Washington, a sweep of No. 3 Stanford and Cal in the Bay Area, and a double-overtime loss at home to No. 7 USC, Blakely averaged close to 26 minutes and more than seven points per game.
Arizona has added two transfers so far this offseason: Paulina Paris (North Carolina) and Sahnya Jah (2024 National Champion South Carolina). Barnes has said that she will add a few more transfers. She also signed three freshmen for the fall in the spring signing period: Lauryn Swann, Katarina Knezevic and Mailien Rolf.
VIDEO: Arizona women's basketball coach Adia Barnes and guard Skylar Jones speak to the play of guard Courtney Blakely against Washington after the UA defeated the Huskies 58-50 on Wednesday, March 6, 2024, in the first round of the 2024 Pac-12 Women's Basketball Tournament at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. (Courtesy Pac-12)
