Poole, a 5-foot-7 guard from Fort Wayne, Ind., played her freshman season at Purdue, averaging 2.8 points and 1.4 assists. She was limited to eight appearances because of injury issues. She entered the transfer portal on March 25 and committed to Dayton on April 3.
Williams-Jeter, who’s entering her fourth season as Dayton coach, said the coaching staff had a relationship with Poole after recruiting her in high school. When Poole entered the transfer portal, Williams-Jeter said, “It was kind of like, ‘I want to go to Dayton.’ She didn’t entertain anything else.”
During her visit to Dayton, the coaches took Poole to On Par Entertainment. Poole told Williams-Jeter there, “I want to be a Flyer.”
Fatima Ibrahim, a 6-foot-3 center from Winnepeg, Manitoba, who played the last two seasons at North Dakota, also committed to Dayton during her visit in April.
Ibrahim averaged 6.6 points and 6.1 rebounds as a sophomore at North Dakota. She won the Summit League Defensive Player of the Year award, averaging 2.5 blocks in conference play. She blocked nine shots in one game against North Dakota State.
“She’s blocked some shots in practice here lately, and I told her I would no longer be friends with her if she blocked my shots like that,” Williams-Jeter said with a laugh. “She kind of palms the ball and slaps it against the floor. There’s that aggression on top of blocking. She’s getting a lot better offensively but is really kind of raw. She’s very coachable and catches on to things very quickly, which has been nice, and she’s just a great kid.”
Dayton’s third transfer, 6-0 forward Maliyah Johnson, a graduate student from Columbus, played two seasons at Pittsburgh and spent the last two years at Houston. She missed last season with a knee injury.
Johnson is nine months into the rehab process. Williams-Jeter said she expects Johnson to be fully cleared by the time preseason practices start in the fall. This summer, Johnson is doing non-contact drills.
“All we’ve seen her do is shoot,” Williams-Jeter said. “For the majority of time we’ve been here, she has been top two in shooting, especially from the 3-point line. She’s slowly coming back. She’ll be a big part of who we are.”
Dayton added one other player this offseason: Maria Grace Talle, a 6-2 forward from Terrebonne, Quebec. She committed to Dayton on June 24 and is the only freshman on the 2025-26 roster.
Talle signed late because she originally planned to spend one more year in high school. She had to finish one class to graduate this summer, Williams-Jeter said, and when she did that, she made her college choice. Schools such as North Carolina State, Clemson, Virginia Tech, Boston College and Southern Methodist also recruited her.
Talle is not on campus because she’s playing for Team Canada at the FIBA U-19 World Cup. It started Thursday in the Czech Republic. Dayton sophomore guard Olivia Leung, of Calgary, Alberta, is also Canada’s team.
The four newcomers join a Dayton program that finished 18-13 last season in Williams-Jeter’s third season. The Flyers lost their three leading scorers: Ivy Wolf, Arianna Smith and Rikki Harris, who exhausted their eligibility.
Credit: Erik Schelkun
Credit: Erik Schelkun
One of the returners standing out this summer is Molly O’Riordan, a 6-2 forward/center who averaged 3.3 points and 2.7 rebounds in 10.1 minutes per game as a freshman last season.
“Molly looks really good,” Williams-Jeter said. “We had a practice before we left for July 4, and she scored pretty much 40 points in one drill. We had to recount it. I’ve watched it a couple times. She hit about 10 3s, a couple turnaround jumpers. She was cooking. She just looks really good. She’s shooting the ball at a high clip with more confidence. She kind of came on for us late in the season.”
Leung, a 5-10 guard who averaged 5.0 points in 13.8 minutes per game as a freshman last season, also showed improvement in summer practices before she left to play for Team Canada.
“She has put on about seven or eight pounds of muscle,” Williams-Jeter.
All the players on the roster will experience a new era in college athletes. Since July 1, NCAA programs have had the ability to pay athletes directly.
“Everybody on my team got a paycheck in some capacity and had to sign a contract last week,” Williams-Jeter said.
Like many coaches, Williams-Jeter has adjusted her recruiting strategies. Coach Anthony Grant and the men’s team added five transfers and two freshmen to the 2025-26 roster. The women’s team added three transfers and one freshmen.
“We worked hard to have two all-conference performers,” Williams-Jeter said. “Losing Arianna and Ivy, who got you almost 20 wins, you’ve got to replace them with some grown women. I’m like coach (Kelvin) Sampson from Houston. He wants a lot of seniors and super seniors. He’s like, ‘I can’t bring boys in to play against grown men. I’ve got to go get a couple grown men.’ And for us, it was like, ‘We’ve got to go get some grown women out here.” Like Fatima. People who are proven, who have played some college minutes. That’s why we probably went a little bit more portal heavy.”
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