Maryland women’s basketball guard Taisiya Kozlova announces intentions to enter transfer portal

Maryland women’s basketball guard Taisiya Kozlova announced via Instagram on Tuesday that she will enter the transfer portal.

Kozlova — who is from Moscow, Russia — will find a new team after playing sparingly as a Terp. She averaged 1.3 points per game in 21 games played during the 2021-22 season.

Because the NCAA granted all fall and winter athletes during the 2020-21 seasons an extra year of eligibility, Kozlova will have three years of college basketball ahead of her.

Kozlova never found a consistent role in the Terps rotation during this past season. Junior guard Ashley Owusu sprained her ankle in the first quarter of Maryland’s Feb. 3 contest against Michigan State, meaning Maryland’s rotation would shrink to only six healthy players. Kozlova appeared in five consecutive games in February as a spot rotation player, but she could not cement a spot in the lineup as the Terps moved into postseason play.

Kozlova arrived in College Park for the 2020-21 season along with rising junior forward/guard Angel Reese. Reese and the rest of Maryland team were filled with enthusiasm when Kozlova contributed on the floor, and Reese specifically noted that “a lot of people don’t see her hard work.”

Owusu announced she would be transferring earlier Tuesday morning, leaving Maryland with two more scholarships to fill heading into the 2022-23 season. The Terps also lose graduate students Chloe Bibby and Katie Benzan from the 2021-22 roster. Head coach Brenda Frese brings in soon-to-be freshman guards Mila Reynolds and Ava Sciolla this fall, and Florida transfer guard Lavender Briggs had already joined the team for the spring 2022 semester.

As of today, Frese brings back two star players in Reese and guard Diamond Miller, but she will need to reconstruct multiple parts of the roster this offseason.