Notre Dame women’s basketball coach Niele Ivey spent much of her spring applying spackle to the holes in her 2025-26 roster in the form of four one-and-done grad transfers.
Thursday brought an addition for 2026-27, and one with potentially more staying power.
Four-star wing player Bella Ragone has become the first player in the 2026 recruiting class to commit to the Irish. The 6-foot-2 rising senior from Braselton, Ga. is the No. 25 player overall in the class, per ESPNw, can sign with the Irish in November.
From Mill Creek High School, Ragone took an official visit to Notre Dame in April and ended up picking the Irish over finalists Louisville, Duke, North Carolina and UCLA.
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The Irish have eight scholarship players on their 2025-26 roster, with the possibility of still adding one or two more, but four of them will be gone before Ragone arrives for the 2026-27 season.
And guard Hannah Hidalgo, Cass Prosper and KK Bransford will all be in their final season of eligibility in 2026-27. Incoming freshman Leah Macy is the only player on next year’s roster who has multiple years of eligibility.
Notre Dame the past couple of months has added four one-and-done players — Vanderbilt guard Iyana Moore, who announced for the Irish on Monday, as well as three April transfer signees — Milaya Cowles, a 6-3 forward from Wake Forest, Kansas State 6-4 forward Gisela Sanchez, and Duke 5-8 guard Vanessa de Jesus.
New Notre Dame men’s and women’s basketball general manager Pat Garrity, who met with the media on Thursday, talked about the importance of both programs’ stressing high school recruiting, player development and player retention as building blocks. And then using the transfer portal to supplement, not to reload.
“When you’re a team and a program like we have here, the word is development,” Garrity said. “Like, we’re bringing in freshmen. We’re developing them physically on the floor into roles where they know that they can grow and excel.
“That doesn’t mean the portal isn’t going to be a part of it, but I think as we’ve seen, it’s going to be more limited than a lot of other places. I actually look at it as an advantage, because when you’re having a conversation with a young player and their family about your plan to develop them as a player and where you think you can get, they can pretty much take that to the bank if they come and put the work in.”
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