Post was updated on June 30 to include original reaction from Cooper.
Kat Cooper is returning home to the Pacific Northwest for her final year of women’s basketball.
A native of Tacoma, Washington, Cooper spent the past four years at Boston College playing in the ACC and will use her final year of NCAA eligibility in Eugene, head coach Kelly Graves announced Sunday.
“The girls and the team, they’re awesome,” said Cooper, who will wear No. 44 for the Ducks. “The coaches, they made me feel like coming back to another family basically. It’s just wonderful to be around a group that’s all fighting for the same goal.”
Cooper has been on the UO campus since June 22 and is enrolled in its Nonprofit Management graduate program.
A 6-foot-tall guard and forward, Cooper will add experience to a 2015-2016 roster full of newcomers.
“She’s used to playing at a high level. She’s off and on played a lot of time,” Graves said. “That’s a positive because we will have so many new faces next year.”
Cooper will be able to play immediately for Graves and the Ducks per the NCAA’s fifth-year transfer rule.
“It’s great because I didn’t feel like I had to work my way in,” Cooper said. “So far, I’ve met great people. The community at Oregon is amazing. I like the school a lot, just the way its set up.”
Oregon’s 2015-2016 roster now has 13 scholarship players after Liz Brenner announced she will rejoin the team on June 22.
“(Cooper is) great in the weight room, she’s such a hard worker,” Graves said. “[Boston College head coach Erik Johnson] had really nice things to say about her, no hard feelings. I think she just wanted to have a bigger role and it wasn’t really going to happen there.”
She played AAU basketball in high school with Oregon senior Lexi Petersen for Tree of Hope and played against senior Jordan Loera.
“It’s great to see some familiar faces and be able to play with them once again,” Cooper said.
Cooper averaged 4.4 points and 1.8 rebounds for Boston College in limited playing time last season. In 2013-2014, she averaged 8.7 points per game, including a career-high 21 points against Duke with five 3-pointers while scoring in double figures in 14 games.
Cooper received an undergraduate degree from BC in May and said it was difficult to leave her former teammates, who she described as sisters.
Her twin sister Chelsea is a student at the University of Washington. Being back in the Pacific Northwest will allow her family to see her more frequently than they did when she was in Boston.
This summer, she hopes to improve her conditioning and her shot while learning the program’s weightlifting expectations, which she said differ from BC.
“I’m just so excited to play and be somewhere that I’m comfortable,” Cooper said in April. “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