Cassandre Prosper was a vital piece of Notre Dame’s first Elite Eight run in seven years. She won’t be running it back with the Fighting Irish for another shot at making the Final Four.

Prosper is entering the 2026 WNBA Draft, she announced Monday evening on Instagram.

“What a beautiful journey is has been,” she wrote. “Watching myself grow these past years has been the most rewarding process. This has been an incredible experience in my life, and it is such a blessing to have the awareness to know when I am ready for a new chapter. I couldn’t be more proud of the woman I’ve become.”

The ACC’s 2026 Most Improved Player, Prosper had a fifth year of eligibility to utilize if she wanted. But after averaging career-bests in points (13.6) and rebounds (6.5) per game as a senior, Prosper is choosing to parlay the best season she ever had at Notre Dame into an opportunity to play professionally. She has the size for it at 6-4, and she might still be tapping into her potential as a game-changing two-way player.

Prosper enrolled early at Notre Dame in the 2022-23 season. Coming from Montreal, Quebec, Prosper has plenty of international basketball experience. She played for Team Canada in the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Prior to that, she won bronze medals at the FIBA AmeriCup and the FIBA U-19 World Cup and a silver medal at the FIBA U-16 Americas Championship.

Once she got to Notre Dame, Prosper played in 22 games as an early enrollee freshman. She made her first three career starts as an eligibility sophomore in 2023-24, but she only played in five games before an injury held her out for the rest of the season. She played in all 34 games with 4 starts in 2024-25. As a senior in 2025-26, she started all 36 of Notre Dame’s games.

The final line on Prosper’s career reads 43 starts in 97 games played with 8.7 points, 4.8 rebounds, 1.2 assists, 1.2 steals and 0.9 blocks in 26.3 minutes per game.

Prosper won’t go down as a national champion, but she will be remembered as one of the prominent players who helped head coach Niele Ivey break through to the Elite Eight for the first time in her tenure. Notre Dame had fizzled out of the NCAA Tournament in the Sweet 16 four years in a row before this spring. Prosper averaged 12.3 points and 4.5 rebounds in 34.0 minutes per appearance during the Irish’s four-game stay in the tournament.

Had Prosper returned, she’d have been another key cog in Notre Dame’s efforts to make it back to the Elite Eight and maybe even the Final Four. She made it clear to Blue & Gold immediately after losing to UConn on March 29, though, that she felt like her time at Notre Dame was successful even without a trip to the sport’s ultimate end-of-season landing spot.

“I’m very proud of my college career,” Prosper said. “I think now it’s just about what I want for myself personally.”

Current Notre Dame women’s basketball 2026-27 roster

Returning players are in bold. Games played at Notre Dame are in parenthesis.

• Graduate senior guard KK Bransford (90)
• Senior guard Hannah Hidalgo (103)
• Senior guard Kelly Ratigan (17)
• Junior guard Luci Jensen (22)
• Redshirt freshman forward Leah Macy (0)
• Freshman guard Jacy Abii
• Freshman guard Jenica Lewis
• Freshman guard Bella Ragone
• Freshman guard Amari Byles
• Freshman forward Isabella Sangha