After three seasons with UConn women’s basketball, junior forward Amari DeBerry announced Monday that she is entering the transfer portal.
DeBerry was the No. 15 prospect in the Class of 2021 and a McDonald’s All-American, and she is also a two-time gold medalist with USA Basketball. However, the 6-foot-6 forward never found her footing with the Huskies, averaging just over six minutes per game over her career in Storrs. She logged a career-low 4.4 minutes per game in 2023-24 and was ruled out for the final nine games of the season with a concussion suffered in practice before the Big East Tournament.
“I’ve cherished my 3 years as a Husky and I’m so thankful for my teammates and coaches during my time in Storrs,” DeBerry wrote in a post on X. “I have decided to enter my name in the transfer portal, and I’m looking forward to this next chapter of my life!”
DeBerry is the first player to transfer out of UConn since 2021-22. The Huskies have lost just four other players to the portal since the end of the 2020-21 season, but only three were on scholarship and none had started a game. In the same time frame, coach Geno Auriemma has added three transfers who all started multiple games: Evina Westbrook from Tennessee and Dorka Juhasz from Ohio State in 2021-22, and Lou Lopez-Senechal from Fairfield in 2022-23.
“There aren’t a whole lot of high-level players coming to play at Connecticut leaving for a better opportunity, so I’m kind of fortunate in that regard,” Auriemma said earlier this season. “We have pretty strong relationships with our best players. They didn’t come here for all the money. They didn’t come here for all the other stuff.”
UConn ended its 2023-24 season on a remarkable NCAA Tournament run to the Final Four, where the No. 3-seed Huskies fell to No. 1-seed Iowa in the national semifinal on Friday. The team returns superstar guard Paige Bueckers for 2024-25, and Auriemma also landed a commitment Saturday from Sarah Strong, the No. 1 prospect in the Class of 2024. UConn is the only program in the country with three top-20 recruits in next year’s class.
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