Notre Dame women's basketball picks up another grad transfer in Marta Sniezek
A hand injury serious enough to require surgery, shin splints and a shoulder injury relegated Marta Sniezek to bystander status during her senior season at Stanford.
She has decided to reinvent herself and her college basketball career at Notre Dame.
The 5-foot-8 guard becomes the second grad transfer to join the Irish roster this offseason, weeks after the NCAA Tournament runners-up lost all five starters to the WNBA Draft. North Carolina guard Destinee Walker, her promising career also mitigated to this point by injuries, is the other grad transfer with immediate eligibility.
While Sniezek helps with the numbers — the Irish have just six returnees joined by incoming freshmen Samantha Brunelle and Anaya Peoples — she doesn’t provide size. Seven of the now 10 scholarship players for the 2019-2020 season are guards, and only junior-to-be Mikayla Vaughn is an established inside presence.
What Sniezek can bring to the equation is defense. She’s a two time Pac-12 All-Defensive honorable mention player. Fifty of her 108 games for the Cardinal came as a starter.
In her most recent playing season (2017-18), she averaged averaged 5.5 points, 3.5 rebounds, 4.3 assists, while shooting 35.9 percent from the field.
The McLean, Va., product was a basketball and soccer standout in high school at Cathedral School in Washington, D.C. There she earned the following accolades in 2015 for basketball: Parade All-American, McDonald’s All-America nominee, WBCA All-America, USA Today D.C. Player of the Year and the Washington D.C. Gatorade Basketball Player of the Year.
