Former South Carolina WBB player Sahnya Jah transferring to ACC school
A former Gamecock women’s basketball player is on the move again.
Former South Carolina forward Sahnya Jah has signed with SMU, the program announced Monday night. It will be her third school in three college seasons.
SMU formally hired Arizona coach Adia Barnes as its next head coach on Monday. Jah played for Barnes at Arizona this season and is following her to her next job.
SMU competes in the ACC and went 10-20 and 2-16 in league play last year.
A four-star recruit from Virginia, Jah signed with coach Dawn Staley and the Gamecocks in the Class of 2023 and played her freshman year with USC.
About halfway through the season, though, South Carolina announced that Jah would be “out indefinitely due to conduct detrimental to the team” (which Staley declined to elaborate on) and that her status would be day to day moving forward.
Jah did not appear in a game for South Carolina after that discipline and did not dress out with the team at home or travel for road games. She entered the transfer portal ahead of the 2024 NCAA Tournament and ended her USC career having appeared in 16 games and averaged 9.1 minutes and 3.1 points per game off the bench.
At Arizona, Jah appeared in 18 of 33 games for a Wildcats team that made the WBIT. She averaged 6.6 points and 2.9 rebounds per game in 15.2 minutes per game this season and had a career-high 22 points against Weber State in December.
Jah, though, faced further off-court issues during her lone season at Arizona. She did not play for roughly two months from late January to mid-March because of an NCAA suspension, according to the Arizona Daily Star.
Barnes, Arizona’s coach at the same, declined to elaborate on what led to the NCAA suspending Jah. Her suspension was lifted heading into the 2025 Big 12 conference tournament and she played seven minutes in the team’s season-ending WBIT loss.
Jah will have two years of eligibility remaining at SMU.
This story was originally published April 8, 2025 at 10:05 AM.
