Yes that name should be familiar to you
With the transfer portal open for nearly three full weeks, the Syracuse Orange women’s basketball program had not made any movement in either direction. There hadn’t even been rumors thrown out there about what Felisha Legette-Jack was up to after her team finished year three 12-18.
Then, on Sunday, the dam finally opened, and the Orange added its first commit of the 2025 transfer portal cycle.
USC transfer guard Dominique Darius announced her commitment to the Orange for her fifth season of college basketball on her Instagram. She didn’t play in the 2024-25 season, redshirting in order to preserve her final year of college eligibility.
The 5 foot 10 Darius hails from Jacksonville, Florida, but has plenty of ties to both Syracuse and the northeast. She is the daughter of Syracuse football legend Donovin Darius, a safety who won Big East Defensive Player of the Year and was named First Team All-American in 1997. He then played ten seasons in the NFL, including nine with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Darius played her high school basketball in the northeast at Blair Academy, graduating early to join UCLA in December 2020. She was a highly ranked recruit in the Class of 2021, and stepped onto the floor immediately upon arriving at UCLA, playing in 16 games during the 2020-21 season.
Her best season in college was 2021-22, where she averaged 19.9 minutes, 5.4 points, and 3.5 rebounds per contest for the Bruins. But she played just six games the next year, and left the team midseason to transfer to crosstown rival USC, where she had to sit out the rest of the year.
In 2023-24, she played in 19 games, averaging under nine minutes and scoring in double figures just once for the Trojans.
Despite not playing for USC last season, Darius made her mark on social media, vlogging the team’s season on her YouTube channel.
In Darius, Syracuse adds a veteran who has been around a lot of high-level winning in college basketball (UCLA made the NCAA Tournament in 2021, USC made the second weekend each of the last two seasons), but hasn’t had the chance to impact that winning in a significant way on the court.
It’s hard to know exactly what type of role Darius will play for Syracuse, but she profiles as an off-ball guard that will need to shoot the ball better than she has each of her last two seasons.
Syracuse also added transfer Aurora Almon from Miami. The 6’4” forward played high school ball with Orange guard Angelica Velez at The Webb School where she was a four-star recruit.
With the Hurricanes, Almon played 15 games averaging 1.3 points and 1.7 rebounds per game. Almon will have three seasons of eligibility left and helps replace some of the size the Orange lost this season.
The Orange, now with two scholarships left, still have room to make some moves to bolster next season’s roster.