Quick notice: Ashley Owusu sent a resignation letter to penn after facing several……..more
Ashley Owusu remembers going on her recruiting trip to Penn State last year when Coach Carolyn Kieger broke out the visuals. She essentially described being presented a pair of vision boards.
One focused on the Nittany Lions’ goals as a team. The other centered on Owusu’s personal goalIt was like a six- to seven-month plan,” Owusu said. “What we were going to do from the day I stepped on campus and what we’re going to do in order for me to achieve not only my team goals but also my personal goals. And that’s something that I don’t think that I experienced since I’ve been in college.”
The clock is ticking on a collegiate career that has had more twists and turns than a Hollywood thriller as Owusu returns to the place where it all began. Penn State on Sunday visits Maryland, where she arrived in 2019 as ESPN’s seventh-ranked freshman in the countrOwusu, an All-Met selection at Paul VI, was named freshman of the year, all-Big Ten first team as a sophomore and a third-team all-American as a junior while winning the Ann Meyers Drysdale Award as the top shooting guard in the nation. That 2021-22 season ended in a Sweet 16 loss for the Terrapins as team chemistry deteriorated despite a stretch being ranked as high as No. 2 in the country.
Owusu decided it was time for a changKind of just looking for a fresh start,” Owusu said, “and just kind of looking for a coach, a coaching staff and a program that not only understood my team goals, what I wanted to achieve with my teammates and everything that’s around me, but also my personal goals.”
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Virginia Tech, in her home state, signed Owusu out of the transfer portal last season in what became a disastrous year. A broken finger suffered in December required surgery, and she fell out of the rotation upon her return. Owusu logged double-digit minutes just three times afterward and didn’t play at all in the postseason as the Hokies advanced to the Final Four. Virginia Tech Coach Kenny Brooks insisted the decision was based on how the team was playing, but the lack of playing time remained a curious situation that spilled into social media, as teammates, former teammates and Owusu’s father commented online. Brooks told the Roanoke Times that the injury caused Owusu to miss critical development time and that she wasn’t able to get “incorporated into what we were doiTransfers are commonplace in today’s NCAA. Even the same player transferring multiple times in consecutive years isn’t strange anymore. To have a former all-American who was named the best shooting guard in the country not even get off the bench was an oddity that remains unclear. The Virginia Tech experiment ended after the team’s Final Four loss and Owusu was looking for a new home again. Yet things still weren’t smooth after she headed to Happy Valley.ng.”e.y.s.
