South Carolina head women's basketball coach Dawn Staley announced that Kierra Fletcher will join the Gamecocks as a graduate transfer from Georgia Tech. She will be eligible to play for the 2022-23 academic year.
A 5-foot-9 guard, Fletcher missed the 2021-22 season with a foot injury but started for four seasons at Georgia Tech prior to the injury, averaging 31.7 minutes for her career. She led the team in assists each of her first three seasons and developed into a consistent outside shooter in her final season on the court, shooting 35.9 percent from beyond the arc in 2020-21. Second on the team in scoring each of her final two seasons, Fletcher averaged 11.3 points in that stretch to lift her career scoring average to 9.6 points per game. She is also a solid rebounding guard, pulling in 5.7 boards per game for her career, including coming in second on the team in 2019-20 with 6.2 per game.
Prior to earning ACC All-Freshman Team honors in 2017-18 as a Yellow Jacket, Fletcher helped Cousino High School in Warren, Mich., to three district championships (2014, 2016, 2017) and the program's first-ever state championship in 2016. The two-time Macomb Area Conference (MAC) Red Division MVP (2016, 2017) averaged 23.6 points, 12.8 rebounds, 6.2 assists and 5.2 steals as a senior en route to Class A Player of the Year honors from the Associated Press. Fletcher was a three-time all-state selection and first-team all-county all four years of her prep career.
Fletcher joins freshmen Talaysia Cooper (Turbeville, S.C./East Clarendon) and Ashlyn Watkins (Columbia, S.C./Cardinal Newman) as additions to Staley's 2022-23 roster. The trio of newcomers will look to help South Carolina defend their National Championship. South Carolina looks to become just the 4th program in NCAA Women's Basketball history to win back-to-back National Titles.