2024-25 Season Preview: TCU Women’s Basketball

The Horned Frogs are headlined by returning stars Sedona Prince, Madison Conner and Olympic medalist Hailey Van Lith.

The TCU women’s basketball team is all in for the 2024-25 season. After an injury-riddled campaign that saw the Horned Frogs hold open tryouts to fill roster slots last winter, TCU has reloaded under second-year head coach Mark Campbell. The Horned Frogs welcome back two stars in center Sedona Prince and guard Madison Conner, who were among the top players in all of women’s college basketball, when healthy. A Lisa Leslie Award finalist last season, Prince nearly averaged a double-double, posting 19.7 points and 9.7 rebounds despite missing a chunk of the season due to a fractured finger that required surgery.

Conner turned in one of the best individual seasons in program history, setting a new school record with 100 3-pointers made while establishing a new NCAA record for most 3-pointers made over a 10-game stretch to start a season (52). Conner, who debuted for TCU last season after transferring in from Arizona, set a program record with 41 points in game and earned All-Big 12 Second Team honors despite missing six games with an injured knee. Conner averaged 19.2 points per game while shooting 38.6 percent from 3-point range.

The return of both Prince and Conner gives the Horned Frogs a stellar one-two punch. But perhaps the most notable news from the women’s basketball program during the offseason was the signing of former LSU and Louisville star guard Hailey Van Lith, who competed for the United States and earned a bronze medal in women’s 3×3 basketball during the 2024 Paris Olympics. Van Lith rose to stardom at Louisville, where she played three seasons before moving on to LSU. Now in Fort Worth, Van Lith will significantly bolster the TCU offense, giving the Horned Frogs another dynamic scoring guard to feature.

Van Lith was one of several talented players Campbell and his staff secured from the transfer portal over the offseason. TCU signed a trio of guards including Kentucky’s Maddie Scherr, Oregon State’s Donovyn Hunter and USC’s Taylor Bigby. Scherr led the Wildcats to consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances in 2021 and 2022 after beginning her career at Oregon. Scherr averaged 12.5 points, 4.8 rebounds and 3.4 assists last winter and has started 83 games over the last three years. Hunter is a promising young point guard who made the All-Pac 12 Freshman Team last season, when she posted 6.8 points and 3.7 assists per game over 34 starts for the Beavers. Bigby, who started her career at Oregon along with Scherr, was a 3-point sharpshooter for the Trojans, converting 38.3 percent of her attempts during the 2022-23 season and 37.0 percent of her attempts during the 2023-24 season.

Also in the mix via the transfer portal are former South Dakota forward Natalie Mazurek and former Georgia State forward/center Deasia Merrill. Mazurek brings both size and shooting to the TCU roster, as the 6-foot-2 forward averaged 7.0 points and 5.0 blocks per game while converting 37.8 percent of her 3-pointers last season. Merrill adds a veteran presence to the Horned Frog frontcourt after appearing in 101 games with 63 starts over four years at Georgia State, where she averaged 8.0 points and 6.5 rebounds per game last season.

While there are a lot of new faces for the Horned Frogs, TCU does welcome back key role players including fifth-year guard Agnes Emma-Nnopu, senior guard Una Jovanovic and junior forward Aaliyah Roberson. Emma-Nnopu, who debuted for the Horned Frogs last season and started all 33 games after arriving from Stanford, averaged career-highs in points (10.7), rebounds (7.2) and field-goal percentage (42.5%). Roberson enjoyed a breakout season as well, averaging career-highs in points (7.8), rebounds (6.1), field-goal percentage (49.7%) and 3-point shooting percentage (35.2%). Jovanovic, who transferred in from Cal State Fullerton last season, started 32 games and averaged 7.1 points while converting a career-high 46.8 percent of her field goals and a career-high 40.2 percent of her 3-pointers.

TCU will begin the 2024-25 season with a home game against Houston Christian on Tuesday evening. The Horned Frogs will compete in two nonconference tournaments including the Cayman Islands Classic and the U.S. LBM Coast-to-Coast Challenge before opening the Big 12 schedule at UCF on Dec. 21. TCU is looking to build on a 21-12 record from last season.