Stanford Women's Basketball Rising Star Enters Transfer Portal

The exodus may be starting. While no other names have entered the transfer portal for Stanford women's basketball, the program does have one player who opted to put their name in the portal, with guard Tess Heal announcing on Tuesday that she was opting to transfer, ending her Stanford career after only one season.

Starting her college career at Santa Clara before transferring to Stanford prior to the start of this past season, Heal will look to play out her final season of eligibility on a new program, hoping to fully maximize her abilities. Spending two seasons with Broncos, Heal dominated during her time in the West Coast Conference, ending her time there as one of the conference's top scorers.

But while she led the Cardinal in shooting percentage (50.3%) and played about 21 minutes per game, she only averaged eight points-- a massive dropoff from the 19.5 she averaged in her sophomore season with Santa Clara.

Still, Heal's transfer can be considered a surprise as the announcement comes about a week after head coach, Kate Paye, said that she did not expect anyone to leave the program while simultaneously saying she didn't expect to pick up any talent through the portal.

Before Heal announced her intention to leave, the Cardinal were slated to have ten returning players combined with five incoming freshman-- giving them zero available scholarships to award any other player. But now that Heal is gone, the Cardinal have decisions to make when it comes to who they should target for the final scholarship.

With Heal officially entering the portal, she now becomes the fifth Stanford Cardinal to transfer out of the program over the past two seasons. The most notable recent transfer include Kiki Iriafen, who led USC to an Elite Eight appearance this season, and Lauren Betts, who is playing in the Final Four with UCLA this weekend.

While losing Heal may hurt the Cardinal, it is not a catastrophic loss. With plenty of depth still expected to return, namely Talana Lepolo and Chloe Clardy and a strong freshman class coming, such as guard Hailee Swan, Stanford is expected to have plenty of options to work with come next season.

Those players were already expected to have big roles, but now with Heal gone, their jobs just got even more important.

Depth is not expected to be an issue for the Cardinal next season, but they have to hope that nobody else opts to enter the portal so that they can keep with the continuity and return to being powerhouses in the world of women's college basketball.