Less than four months before her team opens up its 2025-26 season, UNC women’s basketball head coach Courtney Banghart is already forecasting the group as one of the deepest and most competitive rosters she’s ever assembled.
“I would be very surprised if our rotation was anywhere near as tight as it has been,” Banghart told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “I have absolutely no idea who our first group is gonna be, because we can go a couple different ways with it.”
Banghart’s team lost three starters to the professional ranks following the end of the 2024-25 season: Lexi Donarski, Maria Gakdeng and UNC’s all-time leading rebounder Alyssa Ustby have all departed, taking multiple years of starting experience with them. Guard Reniya Kelly and wing Indya Nivar are the Tar Heels’ returning starters. Rising sophomore Lanie Grant, a 2024-25 ACC All-Freshman honoree, appears primed to inherit a starting role after filling in for the injured Kelly late last season.
“She had a really big step, and she showed a lot of promise and a lot of potential,” Banghart said of Grant, who skipped her senior year of high school and reclassified into UNC’s 2024 recruiting class. “She has to take another step. She’s got to shoot the ball better, she has to finish better.”
Though Grant will be a sophomore in name, she is still the youngest player on a roster featuring three true freshmen. One of them, Brazilian wing Taissa Queiroz, spent the 2025 spring semester with the team as an early enrollee. Queiroz spent the early offseason touring with the Brazilian national team, with one stop being an exhibition against WNBA’s Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark.
Born in Belo Horizonte, Queiroz played at Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa, CA, about an hour’s drive north of San Francisco. While building herself into a four-star recruit, Queiroz schooled herself in English during the COVID pandemic, changing the language on her phone and watching English-language films.
“That’s just Taissa. She is so committed,” Banghart said. “She just finds a way.”
Queiroz’s fellow true freshmen are wings Nyla Brooks and Taliyah Henderson, each of whom bring a wealth of high school honors to Chapel Hill. Brooks played in both the Jordan Brand Classic and the McDonald’s All-American Game, becoming the first McDonald’s All-American to sign with the Tar Heels since Deja Kelly in 2020 (Indya Nivar was a McDonald’s All-American, but initially signed with Stanford before transferring to UNC).
Brooks finished her high school career as the No. 13 overall player in her class and a five-star prospect. Henderson, also a five-star, wasn’t far behind at No. 27.
“All three of them have been real bright spots,” Banghart said of her freshmen. “I’m not sure we’ve had an as game-ready freshman class in a while, which is fun.”
In the transfer portal, UNC lost wing Trayanna Crisp but earned commitments from UCLA guard Elina Aarnisalo and Louisville forward Nyla Harris. Aarnisalo averaged 5.1 points, 3.4 assists and 2.2 rebounds per game during her freshman season at UCLA, helping the Bruins advance to the Final Four. Like Queiroz, Aarnisalo also has international experience, representing her native Finland at the 2022 FIBA U18 European Championship.
“This kid’s been playing at a high level for a long time,” Banghart said of Aarnisalo. “We sometimes lacked facilitators last year across the guard spot, and she can dribble, shoot and pass in so many different ways… I think the ball will move a little more.
UNC head coach Courtney Banghart praised Elina Aarnisalo’s creativity as a player: “She can dribble, shoot and pass in so many different ways.” (Image via UCLA Athletics/Don Liebig)
Harris started 81 games across three seasons at Louisville, posting career highs in points (10.4) and rebounds (6.6) per game as a sophomore during the 2023-24 season. As a freshman, she started all four of the Cardinals’ NCAA Tournament games. Now, as Harris uses her final year of collegiate eligibility with the Tar Heels, Banghart said the senior is bringing a drive to workouts which may have to be temporarily quelled for her own good.
“She literally laid out to save a ball behind the basket,” Banghart said. “It ended up being a tip to a three for her team to win it. And I said, ‘If you had gotten hurt in that moment, we would’ve been in a fight.'”
The head coach also noted how Harris, in addition to Henderson and Queiroz, give the Tar Heels a different playing style in the post compared to the outgoing Ustby and Gakdeng. Where the departing seniors mostly played under or around the basket, Banghart the three newcomers have shown more willingness to expand their range. She described UNC’s new offense as “quite different” from the old style, quickly adding, “and that’s OK.”
In total, the Tar Heels will roster five players who did not play for UNC during the 2024-25 season. In addition to veterans Kelly, Nivar and Grant, reserves Blanca Thomas, Ciera Toomey, Laila Hull and Sydney Barker will also return to the team this fall.
“You love nothing more than being able to recycle bodies through,” Banghart said. “It’s really hard to be able to play as hard and as efficiently as you need to for 32 minutes a game… it lets you play a little bit faster. It lets you defend a little bit tighter, because you’re not hanging onto that foul early. I think all that makes us really different this year than we’ve been in the last couple years.”
Featured image via Associated Press/Ben McKeown
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