KK Bransford is officially Irish.
The four-star guard who is ranked as the No. 29 overall recruit in the class of 2022 according to ESPN signed her letter of intent to play for Notre Dame on Wednesday. She is the only incoming freshman head coach Niele Ivey and the Irish signed in this cycle.
“She was someone I targeted right away in the 2022 class,” Ivey said. “Just a phenomenal young women on and off the court. She fits my culture perfectly. And then what she does on the court, she's versatile. She reminds me a lot of Jackie Young and Arike Ogunbowale.”
That is good company for Bransford, a senior at Cincinnati (Ohio) Mount Notre Dame High School. Young and Ogunbowale won a national championship together at Notre Dame in 2018. Bransford has led her high school team to two straight state titles.
So it is easy to see why Ivey, with just 10 scholarship players on her 2021-22 team that just opened the season with a 105-69 victory over Ohio, was perfectly content with signing just one player in the class of 2022.
Quality over quantity.
“I actually kind of like the roster size that I have right now,” Ivey said. “My philosophy is to have about 12 on the team. So we’ll see. You never know what the year is going to look like. I’m very happy with the group we have, and I’m very happy with the addition of KK.”
Ivey said Bransford, who averaged 21.4 points, 6.4 rebounds, 5.1 assists and 3.0 steals per game as a junior, is capable of playing any position on the floor outside of center. Like Notre Dame's two newest freshmen Olivia Miles and Sonia Citron, Bransford could work her way into a substantial role in her first season in South Bend.
“KK has a college body right now,” Ivey said. “I think the sky’s the limit for her. She’s capable of making an immediate impact. She’s different from the guards we have because of her size and versatility. With how she plays, she’s going to do whatever she can to help the team and whatever I need.”
Ivey said a smaller roster allows her to get players more involved on a nightly basis. Walk-on senior Sarah Cernugel, for instance, scored a bucket in the win over Ohio. All 12 players on the team played at least one minute including Cernugel and fellow walk-on Trinity Cha.
Ivey confirmed every player on the current roster is eligible to return in 2022-23 because of the extra year granted to every player who participated in last year’s pandemic-impacted season. Graduate student Maya Dodson and seniors Dara Mabrey, Abby Prohaska and Kate Gilbert all have one more season. In a perfect world, Notre Dame’s roster next season looks identical to that of this season plus Bransford.
Of course, there will likely be plenty of moving parts. Maybe Dodson, who scored 25 points in 27 minutes in the season opener, elects to test the WNBA waters. Ivey said said there might be “different rules” for her anyway being that she transferred in the middle of the COVID year. There will be more to that if March rolls around and Dodson is looking to spend one more season at Notre Dame.
And maybe Mabrey, who transferred from Virginia Tech prior to last season, is ready to hang up her college sneakers and get on with whatever is next for her too. The reality of the situation is that anyone on the roster could depart the program for any number of reasons — playing time concerns, differences of opinion, a season gone south, etc.
That would leave numbers for Ivey to fill given Bransford is the only incoming freshman. Ivey said she is open to surveying the transfer portal as things go along and if it becomes clear she might have to do so. As it stands now, though, she's perfectly content with Bransford being the only new addition.
“It’d be great for her to be the [only] one,” Ivey said. “But after the season, it’s going to be an assessment for our coaching staff. As you saw last year, there was a lot of movement. I’m definitely open to whatever comes our way and whatever is best for this program.
“For me, again, it's about fit. So if I bring someone in here, it’s because they're the right fit. If you look at Maya the past couple games, you realize how perfect a fit she was for us. So that’s definitely something I'll take into consideration — if we do add different layers or different pieces, it matches what I'm building here.”
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