Jade Blagrove and Sara Guerreiro will join the Bulls for the 2020-21 season.
TAMPA (April 15, 2020) – University of South Florida head women’s basketball coach Jose Fernandez announced on Wednesday the signing of Jade Blagrove (Barendrecht, Netherlands) and Sara Guerreiro (Seixal, Portugal) to National Letters of Intent (NLI) on the first day of the spring signing period. Both student-athletes are expected to make an impact during the 2020-21 campaign.
“Both Sara and Jade fit our needs on and off the floor as student-athletes here at USF,” said Fernandez. “We are very excited for them both to join our Bulls family.”
Blagrove, a 6-foot-2 small forward, is a long, athletic frontcourt player with good moves in the paint who can face up to the basket and get to the rim. She also has good three-point range and is a solid rebounder who runs the floor in transition.
Blagrove attends Calandlyceum, a secondary school in Amsterdam, and currently plays for the Orange Lions Academy U20 team. Blagrove averaged 17.6 points and 10.0 rebounds per game before the season was shut down in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She was voted the Most Valuable Player in the 2019 European Girls Basketball League (EGBL) Tournament held in Minsk, Belarus. During the 2018-19 season, Blagrove helped Orange Lions Academy to the U20 EGBL Cup.
Blagrove has also spent time with the Netherlands U14, U16 and U18 national teams. Ranked 26th in the world, the Netherlands finished sixth in the 2018 U18 European Championships in Oberwart, Austria.
Guerreiro is a 5-foot-8 combo guard who currently plays for Quinta Dos Lombos in Lisbon, Portugal – the same team current Bull Beatriz Jordao (Pombal, Portugal) played for. Guerreiro averaged 5.9 points and 3.0 rebounds per game while shooting 52.7 percent from the field and 83.3 percent from the free-throw line for Quinta Dos Lombos.
Guerreiro is an athletic backcourt player who scores in multiple ways, and a great facilitator at point guard. She also can move over to the shooting guard position, where she looks to score. In addition, she brings extensive high-level international experience.
On the international stage during the summer of 2019, Guerreiro split time with Portugal’s U20 national team, also with Jordao, averaging 8.0 points, 1.7 rebounds and 1.5 assists per outing. Guerreiro logged 9.0 points and 4.1 rebounds per outing with the U18 national team.
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USF notched its ninth consecutive 19-win season and was poised for its ninth straight postseason appearance in 2019-20 before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the end of the college basketball season. The Bulls celebrated two all-conference honorees in Elena Tsineke and Elisa Pinzan. Tsineke was named the American Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year, in addition to The American All-Freshman Team and Third Team All-Conference; while Pinzan was named a Third Team All-Conference selection.
USF has made 15 postseason tournament appearances and had six NCAA Tournament berths in head coach Jose Fernandez’s 20 seasons. The all-time winningest coach in program history, Fernandez has guided USF to nine 20-win seasons, two WNIT final four appearances, the 2009 WNIT championship and won more than 350 games.
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