Shortly after the University of Miami women’s basketball team went on its first-ever run to the Elite Eight of March Madness last spring, the Hurricanes lost almost half their roster. The departures were headlined by basketball-stars-turned-social-media giants Haley and Hanna Cavinder, who left due to name, image and likeness-induced early retirement.
But for 19-year Miami head coach Katie Meier, the changes that NIL deals and transfer-portal freedom have brought to the NCAA have been both a blessing and a curse. The Hurricanes have had to adapt to the new rules introduced in 2021 that allow NCAA D1 basketball players to change schools once using the portal without sitting out a year, opening up the opportunity for Miami to replace the Cavinder twins with a pair of guards from Canada this summer.
The Hurricanes landed former ACC Freshman of the Year Shayeann Day-Wilson (formerly Duke) and sophomore shooting guard Lemyah Hylton, the highest-rated international recruit of her class (formerly Arizona). They joined junior’s Latasha Lattimore, who transferred to Miami from Texas in 2022, and Lashae Dywer, who was recruited there out of high school, giving Miami four players who each grew up within 10 minutes of each other in Toronto’s west end. Go figure.
Sure, basketball is growing in Canada, with the reigning men’s college player of the year, Purdue’s Zach Edey, being from Toronto, and 138 Canadian women playing D1 NCAA hoops this season. But for four Canadian athletes to end up on the same squad south of the border? That’s quite rare.
“[I could see it happening] at Vermont or something, or maybe out west in the border states of Canada, but not in Miami. No, it’s unheard of. It’s hilarious,” Meier tells Sportsnet.ca about having four Canadians on her 11-woman roster. “But, I mean, it started with Lashae … Shae is a really great, great human being and she’s got a good reputation and she plays really hard and she just loves to play. She’s got a real grit to her and a lot of guts, and people like playing with her.”
Dwyer, the five-foot-six point guard out of Toronto, moved to the United States when she was just 14 to pursue basketball. As is the case with most Canadians, the transition was difficult, as she was without family and had to adjust to a different culture.
Miami started to recruit her during her junior year of high school, continuing to check up on her throughout the COVID-19 pandemic until she joined them in 2021. But it wasn’t until her sophomore year that Dwyer began to feel more comfortable in Coral Gables because that was when Toronto-native Lattimore — who played AAU basketball with Dwyer at UPLAY Canada — transferred to Miami. A year later, Hylton and Day-Wilson joined them to create a lethal foursome of Canadian ballers who are leaning on each other to navigate the convoluted and competitive world of NCAA basketball, on and off the court.
“It changed my situation a lot because I have some more people to relate to, [based on] where we come from,” Dwyer says. “My freshman year we had a lot of Europeans and overseas people, but they didn’t really understand how Canadians feel playing in America, if that makes sense.”
“So, just having other Canadians with me, it just makes me feel more at home and just more comfortable.”
Not only is Dwyer feeling more comfortable now that she is surrounded by three other Canadians, but the three transfers are all there at least in part because of her. After all, Meier leaned on Dwyer a lot during the recruiting process to get information on the potential transfers when they were in the portal since she grew up playing either with or against them. And the opportunity to team up with a familiar face made the decision to attend Miami easier for the heavily recruited transfers, too.
Lattimore, for example, didn’t feel like the system at Texas fit her game or her vibe “community wise or family wise,” so she entered the transfer portal after her rookie year. After nearly committing to LSU, who won the national championship last season, the six-foot-four forward “felt like I needed to keep looking, like something was telling me to keep looking.”
She then remembered that Dwyer played for Miami, who had reached out, and began thinking, “I’m away from home and then there’s a Canadian on that team … So I was like, OK, I know Lashae, almost kind of grew up with her. So it’s like, I’ll feel like I’m at home because Lashae is there and I know her [and] we’re both from the same country.”
Despite a difficult sophomore year in Coral Gables last year, when Lattimore sustained an ACL injury and was limited to just nine games, her decision to join Miami looks even better now that Hylton and Day-Wilson, her best friend from childhood, joined the team a year later.
“Shayeann, her being so goofy, and just her bringing that back alive — for me and her just being together again, it brings me so much joy,” Lattimore says. “It’s like we’re taking over the team slowly, like It was a vibe that I wanted to keep and catch onto because it was like, OK, more Canadians are coming.”
After being shot out of a cannon and winning ACC Freshman of the Year at Duke in 2021, Day-Wilson struggled to meet expectations in her sophomore season before losing in the second round of the March Madness tournament. The five-foot-six point guard decided to move on from Duke, relishing the opportunity to team back up with Lattimore after the two of them won back-to-back Ontario Scholastic Basketball Association championships with Crestwood Prep in high school (she also played on the same AAU team as Dwyer and Lattimore).
Hylton, meanwhile, ended up in the transfer portal after an up-and-down rookie season at Arizona where she felt like the style of play didn’t suit her high-flying style of play. Now, the athletic five-foot-11 shooting guard has fit into Miami like a glove, with coach Meier calling her “the most pleasant surprise for me” after not knowing much about Hylton’s game before this season.
It wasn’t necessarily a calculated move from any of the transfers to form a Canadian superteam in Miami, but it has certainly worked out for all of them.
“It just kind of happened I think where all of us just ended up on the same team,” Day-Wilson says. “It’s one of those things where it just kind of feels like home a little bit because we’re just all here and we all know each other, like literally lived probably 10 to 15 minutes away from each other [growing up], played against each other back in the day or played with each other.
“That type of feeling is just amazing, it’s great. And yeah, I think that honestly, we’re familiar with each other … People are just connected. I don’t know how to say, it’s just a surreal moment.”
That connection is leading to good results on the court early this season. At 6-0, the Hurricanes are one of just two teams in the ACC with an undefeated record. And the four Canadians are each playing pivotal roles to ensure that people take notice of what’s going on in Miami. Dywer is starting for the first time in her career and leading the team in steals as a pesky and tough defender, Hylton and Day-Wilson are sparkplugs off the bench shooting a combined 22-for-56 from three-point range (along with a team-high 31 assists for Day-Wilson), and Lattimore is slowly returning from injury, averaging five points, three rebounds and a block through three games.
Hylton and Day-Wilson agree that the team is nowhere near hitting its peak. They believe the key to their early season success is their chemistry, which has become increasingly rare these days with the transfer portal leading to more player movement. It helps that the four Canadians know each other’s games.
“I definitely think that can give us some advantage honestly, maybe in just the sense of like, Latasha’s back now and me and Latasha played together, and I know where Latasha’s spots are. Or I know how to find Lashae, and just little things like that,” Day-Wilson says. “I think that you can kind of see it, like I said, a little bit. But we need all 10 of us [players] to be exactly the way how all four of us [Canadians] are [to reach the team’s top level].”
“We’ve been working in a couple other transfers, too. So it’s been a lot of work,” Meier says about the early season process. “But yeah, when I accidentally — and I mean this: accidentally, like you just picked up teams and and accidentally all four Canadians are on the same team in scrimmages — they do very well.
“So, I gotta pay attention more to my accidents.”
As much as the four Canadians miss certain things about home, including ketchup chips, poutine, their mothers’ home cooking, and Tim Hortons, Dwyer, Day-Wilson, Hylton and Lattimore are committed to thriving together in Coral Gables for the long term.
“Nobody really sees the talent that comes out in Canada. The fact that there’s four Canadians on his team, the talent is really being shown,” Lattimore says. “We’re here to show that yeah, we have a chip on our shoulder. And yeah, we’re from Canada, and we have talent and not only America has talent.”
“So I do think that we all walk around with a little chip on our shoulder, which we honestly should because a lot of people doubt Canadian basketball players, especially women that come out of Toronto, specifically.”
After making it to their first Elite Eight last spring, Miami is trying to go on another long run in March despite having a drastically different roster. They know that being at the centre of a long run would act as proof that NCAA teams can win with Canadian talent, which could open up more doors for Canadian women coming out of high school and the transfer portal for years to come.
“When I first started coaching, there was nice, solid Canadian players, but I mean, the athleticism is just ridiculous now,” Meier, who has been coaching NCAA basketball since 1993, says. “There’s a lot of talent and I didn’t think that Miami would be a logical thing for a lot of Canadians. But as it turns out, we’re doing really well.”
“And I’m gonna [keep recruiting] in Canada, you better believe it.”
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