Kat Cooper, a 6-foot redshirt junior guard/forward from Boston College, will transfer to play for the Oregon women’s basketball team next season, a Boston College athletic department spokesperson confirmed Friday.
“I’m so excited, one, to be able to go back home and I’m also so grateful to go to Oregon for my fifth year,” Cooper said.
Cooper, a native of Tacoma, Washington, averaged 4.4 points, 1.8 rebounds in 13.2 minutes per game this season for the Eagles. During her junior season, she averaged 8.7 points a game and 3.1 rebounds, including a career-high 21 points against Duke with five three-pointers.
She played in seven games during her sophomore year before a season-ending knee injury.
Cooper is the sixth incomer Graves and his staff will introduce to Eugene next year. The group includes junior college transfers Megan Trinder and Mar’Shay Moore, and freshmen Oti Gildon, Maite Cazorla and Lauren Yearwood. Jacinta Vandenberg will be eligible to play in 2015-16 after sitting out last season after transferring from Fresno State.
Cooper will be eligible to play immediately for the Ducks per the NCAA’s fifth-year transfer rule. She will graduate from Boston College on May 18.
She will reunite with AAU Tree of Hope teammate Lexi Petersen in Eugene. She also knows Jordan Loera from her club basketball days.
Her twin sister, Chelsea, attends the University of Washington and she’s looking forward to being closer to her family, who didn’t get to attend many games at BC.
“I’m excited to play on the west coast again,” Cooper said.
Cooper said playing away from home was hard for her.
“The hardest part was not being able to go home when you want,” she said. “In four years, I usually only went home during August and came back.”
This past season, in three starts, Cooper had season highs in rebounds (eight) and points (15) against Indiana and Hartford.
Cooper was recruited out of Auburn Riverside High School by Graves’ previous team — Gonzaga — along with Iowa State and Oregon State. She was named to the Associated Press first team 4A all-Washington in her senior year.
Cooper applied to Oregon’s educational leadership graduate program and would like to one day enact a program to help high school student-athletes prepare for college.
Cooper said she will take her official visit to Eugene during the first weekend of May and plans to sign her National Letter of Intent during her visit.
“I’m just so excited to play and be somewhere that I’m comfortable,” Cooper said.
“I want to help move the program forward because I know the team is a bunch of girls that want to win.”
Follow Jonathan Hawthorne on Twitter @Jon_Hawthorne