Idaho women’s basketball posts 23rd-ranked transfer class after adding five players

MOSCOW, Idaho – Arthur Moreira sits atop a pair of pillars that seem to be particularly well suited for NCAA roster construction in the contemporary age.

Based on his initial season as Idaho’s women’s basketball coach in 2024-25, Moreira has an uncanny understanding of the transfer portal after the Vandals finished 18-12 overall and a third-place 10-8 in the Big Sky Conference.

Olivia Nelson, Idaho’s leading scorer and All-Big Sky first-team selection, and Jennifer Aadland, the leading rebounder, came to Moscow as one-and-done graduate transfers stepping up from NCAA Division II competition.

Also, Moreira’s resume includes working with the Brazilian national program, which affords credibility with players for whom English is not their first language, and he has helped steer two former Vandals, Hope Butera and Aadland, toward potential opportunities to play professionally overseas.

Add to that lessons he learned from his first trip around the Big Sky as a head coach last season, and an assessment from The Portal Report that Idaho has the 23rd-ranked transfer class in the nation going into this season, and there is ample reason for optimism in Moscow.

“I feel like I am way better prepared now,” Moreira said. “We are going to be a lot more athletic. Bigger overall.”

The Vandals signed five players from the portal, including Kyra Gardner, a 5-foot-11 senior guard transferring from Washington State; Lorena Barbosa, a 6-5 redshirt senior post originally from Brazil and most recently from San Francisco; Debora dos Santos, 6-0 redshirt senior from Brazil and USF; Niveya Henley, a 6-0 redshirt senior guard originally from Seattle and transferring to Idaho from Furman; and Mary McMorris, a 5-6 senior guard who formerly played at Northern Arizona and last season at Division II Valdosta (Georgia) State.

The first objective evaluation of Moreira’s recruiting handiwork will be in July when all the new players are in town and begin five weeks of summer workouts leading up to the fall semester.

Henley is the only transfer portal Vandal in Moscow, where she is taking summer classes toward a master’s in environmental studies and rehabbing her second anterior cruciate ligament repair.

“He was one of the first people to call me out of the transfer portal,” Henley said of Moreira.

“He talked about bringing me closer to home,” and he was undeterred about the all-conference left-hander coming back from a serious knee injury, she said.

Henley took a leap of faith in transferring her rehab from the trainers she knew at Furman to those she did not know at Idaho. But she is comfortable with the way her recovery is proceeding.

“I will be where I am supposed to be when I am supposed to be there,” she said.

Her length at guard and an ability to get to the rim as a left-hander will be valuable assets for the Vandals.

Although she is from Seattle, Henley said Moscow was foreign territory until she became a Vandal.

“I had never heard of it before,” Henley said. … “I know we have a good football team.

“I really enjoy it. I like the atmosphere.”

Henley seems to epitomize what Moreira got from the portal in Nelson and Aadland last season: a mature individual, a good student, good teammate, a quick study who readily adapts to a new team, and someone who has played a ton of basketball.

“Nothing is new to them,” Moreira said of graduate transfers. “They have seen a lot,” .

While he is leaning heavily on one-year players for the second season in a row, Moreira said going forward he hopes to focus more on recruiting freshmen and regional players and using the portal to fill holes.

In the meantime, the portal and graduate transfers seem to be mutually beneficial for Idaho and the players.

“After playing four years, my focus is to win a championship, since I never have,” Henley said of her last go-round as a college basketball player.