Minium: ODU Women's Basketball Returns 4 Starters, Added Talented Newcomers

By Harry Minium

NORFOLK, Va. – With her top four scorers returning from last season, DeLisha Milton-Jones knew that the trickiest part of this offseason would be convincing that foursome not to enter the transfer portal.

And like so many mid-majors, ODU hasn’t always had as much success in retaining players as she would have liked.

But during the crucial open portal period, the ODU women’s basketball head coach retained all four, and also went into the portal and got some outstanding prospects.

The four starters – En’Dya Buford, Simaru Fields, Kelsey Thompson and Simone Cunningham – scored nearly 70 percent of ODU’s points last season. No Sun Belt team came close to matching this retention rate.

The newcomers include three players from Sun Belt Conference rival Coastal Carolina and one of the best junior college players in the nation. And ODU will have a ton of size. Four newcomers are 6-foot or taller.

“I’m very pleased with what we were able to do in the offseason, both in retaining players and going out and getting new ones,” said Milton-Jones, who will be entering her sixth season at ODU.

ODU has won 22 or more games in three of her five seasons and went to the WNIT three times. But Milton-Jones wants more – a Sun Belt championship and ODU’s first NCAA Tournament bid since 2008.

“We have so much more depth and size than we had last season,” she said. “We have shooting ability and speed.

“I think this team will allow us to play the way I’ve wanted to play since I got here, up-tempo and pressing on defense for 40 minutes.”

Although ODU went 18-16 last season, which failed to meet expectations, the team was extremely close. And that closeness was a big reason the four starters returned.

“We had a very loving atmosphere on that team, on the court, in the locker room and away from basketball,” Milton-Jones said. “The players were very clos

“Our players wanted to return.”

But in the era of players receiving compensation, it would take more than love for them to return. Milton-Jones said that ODU officials gave her enough financial resources to offer her veterans enough compensation to convince them not to test the market.

She said ODU President Brian O. Hemphill, Ph.D.; Dr. Wood Selig, ODU’s director of athletics; and Jena Virga, who heads the Old Dominion Athletic Foundation, made that financial support possible.

“Some of our kids could have gotten Power 4 offers had they gone in the portal,” she said. “But President Hemphill, Dr. Selig and Jena gave us the resources we needed to be competitive.”

Buford, a 5-foot-7 guard from Memphis, was often the go-to player for the Monarchs. A second-team All-Sun Belt selection, she started in all 34 games and led the team in scoring with 13.1 points and was second in rebounding at 5.9. She also had 4.1 assists per game and had 82 steals. She ranked 39^th nationally with 2.41 steals per game.

Thompson, the standout 5-10 transfer from South Alabama, averaged 9.5 points and 4.7 rebounds and had nearly two assists per game and at times was the best player on the court for ODU.  

Cunningham, a 5-10 center from Pleasant Grove, Alabama, averaged 9.1 points and eight rebounds and was a defensive stalwart.

Fields, a 5-6 guard from Gulfport, Mississippi, averaged 11.3 points and 3.5 rebounds and added 72 assists and 41 steals.

Hama’ya Fielder, a 5-8 guard from Philadelphia, Miss. (2.9 points) and Nisaa Muhammad, a 5-10 sophomore from Dallas, Texas (0.5 points, one rebound), and Mariah Clayton, a 5-10 sophomore forward from Mesquite, Texas also return.

One newcomer to watch is Nevaeh Scott, a 5-6 guard from Memphis, who helped lead Northwest Florida State College to the junior college national title. 

She averaged 12.5 points, made nearly 50 percent of her three-point shots and nearly 90 percent of her free throws. But she was at her best under pressure, in the junior college national tournament, averaging nearly 25 points in four games.

She was named MVP of the championship game.

Seven players from that team signed Division I scholarships.

Four ODU transfers come from Sun Belt rivals and two will add a ton of size.

Laila Walker, a 6-4 forward, transferred from Louisiana-Monroe. The senior from Gulfport, Miss. averaged 4.4 points and 5.8 rebounds and has made a solid impression in summer practice.

Riley Stack (6-4 forward, Piedmont, S.C.) transferred from Coastal Carolina. An excellent shooter, she was sixth in the Sun Belt with 1.23 blocked shots per game in spite of playing just 14 minutes per game. She made 37 percent of her three-point shots – a good stat for a big player – and averaged 4.2 points and 3.1 rebounds.

Jaylen Ponder (5-11 forward, Pompano, Florida) also transferred from Coastal and has impressed in practice. She averaged 6.6 points per game and was third on the team with 42 steals. She’s also an excellent shooter – she made 45 percent of her shots.

Nakiyah Allen (6-foot forward, Lena, Louisiana) also adds height and scoring power. She averaged 12.7 points and six rebounds per game while making 62.4 percent of her shots at Kilgore College, a junior college in Kilgore, Texas.

Dalanna Carter (5-6 guard, Beach City, Texas) was the final transfer from Coastal. She was a part-time starter who averaged 3.7 points per game.

Alisha Nunley (5-5 guard, Euless, Texas) scored 11.8 points per game while making 41.6 percent of her shots and 83.1 percent of her free throws at Collin County Community College in Texas.

The lone high school newcomer, T’anna Saddler (6-1 forward, Dallas, Texas) averaged 8.4 points and 3.4 rebound at Lincoln High School.

ODU’s roster will truly represent the Deep South portion of the Sun Belt. Four players hail from Texas, three from Mississippi, two each from Tennessee and Alabama and one apiece from South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida.

Milton-Jones, who is an assistant coach for Team USA at the 2025 FIBA Women's AmeriCup this summer in Chile, is from Georgia and was an All-American at Florida, and has extensive recruiting contacts in the South.

ODU has yet to release its schedule but Milton-Jones said it will be among the toughest the Monarchs have played in a long time.

“We’ll be playing some Power 4 teams on the road,” she said. “We will use those games to get our girls ready for our Sun Belt schedule.

"Our primary goal is to win the conference championship. We have a lot of work to do to put this team together. But the kids are working very hard. I'm optimistic.”

 Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram