After two weeks on the job, new Cleveland State coach Bob Dunn has secured his first player from outside of the program, as St. Bonaventure transfer Brianna Barr-Buday committed to the Vikings over the weekend.
Barr-Buday announced her commitment on Instagram, and it was subsequently reported by On3’s Talia Goodman.
“After an amazing visit with [Dunn, Shelby Zoeckler, and Carolyn Wochele], I have decided to commit to [Cleveland State], her post read. “I am so grateful for this opportunity, and ready to be Viking! #thirdtimesacharm”
Barr-Buday, a 6-2 forward from Grand Island, NY, just outside of Buffalo, has three seasons of eligibility remaining. She spent 2025-26 with a resurgent Bonnies team that jumped from six wins to 17, and earned a bid to the WNIT, while averaging five points and two rebounds in just under ten minutes per game.
For whatever it may be worth, she played, arguably, her two best college contests inside the Vikings’ Woodling Gymnasium, at this past season’s CSU Invitational. In the Bonnies’ 75-71 loss to the hosts on November 26th, Barr-Buday came off the bench to hit all five of her field goal attempts and produce ten points, while adding a couple rebounds. Three days later in a rout of Valparaiso, she connected on seven of her eight shots, on the way to a career-high 16 points, alongside four rebounds.
She later scored 15 points in one of St. Bonaventure’s best wins of the year, a 72-71 overtime victory against Duquesne on February 7th.
Her time with the Bonnies was preceded by an awkward false start at Buffalo. Barr-Buday signed as a member of the Bulls’ 2024 entering class, and participated in team workouts that summer, but was no longer with the program by preseason.
She was just one of several scheduled incoming freshmen that left the squad during then-coach Becky Burke’s tenure at UB. Five announced 2023 entrants later decommitted before ever playing for the school, including recent Robert Morris transfer addition Timberlynn Yeast, while Barr-Buday and Samairah Thompson quietly departed the following season.
While attending Buffalo as, essentially, a normal student, Barr-Buday flashed
“It really helped me mentally and emotionally,” she said in an SBU-produced feature. “A lot of times, you play basketball for your whole life, and then it ends, you graduate or whatever, and you don’t know what to do with your life. So that was kind of a precursor to that, where you’re like ‘oh wow, this is how it is when you don’t have it anymore.’ You find sort of a mental peace with it, so I feel like it was a good lesson.”
Manhattan, Marist, Saint Joseph’s, La Salle, Canisius, and Niagara were also involved in her original recruitment, when she was a standout player at Nichols School in Buffalo. Barr-Buday averaged 15.9 points, 11.6 rebounds, 1.7 assists, 1.5 steals and one block per game at Nichols – an institution that coincidentally wears green and white, while using “Vikings” as its mascot – and was named All-Western New York First Team as a senior. She also ran track in high school.
With Barr-Buday on board to offer some much-needed interior presence, Cleveland State’s projected roster now sits at six players. Dunn convinced 2025-26 Vikings Hanna Medina Kajevic, Sarah Hurley, Paula Pique and Queen Ruffin to withdraw from the transfer portal and return to CSU, while Emma Pique, Paula’s sister, still appears to be on her way to Ohio this summer. The team’s other November signee, 6-6 center Addie Carr, has been swiped away by Texas State and the head coach who recruited her, Chris Kielsmeier.
It’s also notable that the newest Viking cited both Zoeckler and Wochele in her commitment post, possibly indicating that the Northeast Ohio natives will remain on Dunn’s first Cleveland State staff.
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