BOZEMAN — Darian White announced her commitment to the Nebraska women's basketball team on Tuesday, the culmination of a lengthy recruiting process for the former Montana State point guard.
After receiving interest from more than three dozen schools in every corner of the country, White landed with the Cornhuskers. She took an official visit this week and found the fit she was looking for, in addition to a couple of familiar faces.
“I actually did have some other visits scheduled, but when I was there (in Lincoln), it just felt like home,” White said. “The girls were amazing. I can tell how close they are. They were so welcoming. They just took me around and were just like, ‘We want you here and we’re so excited for you to be here.’”
White will graduate from Montana State in May with a degree in community health and a minor in human development, officially closing the book on her historic career as a Bobcat.
She thought a lot about a professional career, but through conversations with coaches and other mentors, White gave more consideration to using her final season of eligibility (granted to her because of the COVID-19 pandemic). She has not yet decided on her graduate program at Nebraska.
White figures a professional opportunity will still be available to her a year from now, so she wanted to get the most out of the college game that she could. She said returning to Montana State was a possibility, but she wanted to look at all her options.
She entered the transfer portal in late March and ended up having plenty of schools to choose from. White said she received interest from fellow Big Sky member Idaho State; from Boise State in her hometown; from schools along the West Coast (Oregon, San Francisco, Portland); from schools on the East Coast (Florida, Maryland, Albany); and from nearly everywhere in between (Colorado State, Kentucky, Alabama, Nevada, Oklahoma State, Seton Hall, Utah State, Illinois).
White had scheduled other visits to Missouri, Wisconsin and Florida, but she didn’t feel the need to take them.
At Nebraska, she found head coach Amy Williams, who has led the Huskers to two NCAA Tournament appearances since taking over in 2016. Last season, Nebraska went 18-15 overall and won two games in the Postseason WNIT before losing in the Super 16 to Kansas.
“Coach Williams actually reminds me a lot of (MSU head) coach (Tricia Binford),” White said. “She’s very welcoming as well. She’s family-oriented. Right off the bat when we were having conversations, I could tell that she was a coach that I wanted to play for because I could tell how much she cares about her players off the court as well.”
In a press release announcing White’s signing, Williams said: “Darian is the perfect fit for our Nebraska women’s basketball family. She brings a lot of experience in the guard position. Not only was she named first-team all-conference on multiple occasions, but she was twice named the Defensive Player of the Year in the Big Sky. We love that she is motivated on both sides of the ball and capable of making everyone around her better.”
Nebraska also had an advantage in its recruitment of White because it announced the hiring of Julian Assibey as an assistant on Monday. Assibey spent the past three seasons as an assistant at Florida, which came after spending 2016-20 at Montana State.
“He has always been a coach that I have looked up to and loved playing for,” White said, “and I was so excited to hear that he was going to be on staff after I’d already been talking to them for a little bit.”
White is also pleased to reunite with Alex Jardine (women’s basketball strength coach at Montana State from 2017-21) and Ben Huver (a former MSU athletic trainer for two years). Coupled with the fit on the basketball court, White considered Nebraska too good to ignore.
“I’m honestly speechless about it,” she said. “It was like God just putting all of this right in front of me, like, ‘You got to take this. You have to take advantage of this opportunity.’”
White said she wouldn’t be at this point in her career without Binford allowing her “to flourish in her program” at Montana State.
“She has had such a huge impact on not only me as a person on the floor, but also just me as a person in everyday life, and I just have so much respect for her for everything that she has done for me and also this program,” White said. “She’s amazing, and I will always love that woman with everything in my heart.”
But White’s next chapter will be written at Nebraska. It’s a step up in competition from the Big Sky, but she’s looking forward to improving her game and making the most of her final collegiate season.
“(The coaches) think I can be very successful in the Big Ten and I’m going to have an immediate impact,” White said. “But I’m also going to be challenged, of course, by the girls on the team. I’m really excited for the challenge, and I’m looking forward to going to play and start working with them.”