Visa Red Tape Keeps South Carolina Freshman Loubens Sidelined Despite Being on Campus
COLUMBIA — Every one of South Carolina women’s basketball’s 15 roster spots is physically accounted for on campus, yet one player remains locked out of team activities entirely. Freshman Justine Loubens, who made the trip from France, is stuck navigating visa paperwork before she can officially join her new teammates on the floor.
“Justine is currently in Columbia to visit campus and get to know her teammates. She is not participating in any team activities, but we look forward to her officially joining the team soon,” a team spokesperson told The Greenville News on July 9.
The update surfaced shortly after Loubens was spotted working alongside South Carolina sports performance coach Molly Binetti, who shared a clip of the freshman on her Instagram story earlier that day with a simple caption: “Bonjour.” The brief glimpse suggests Loubens is being eased into the program’s orbit informally — building familiarity with staff and surroundings — even while formal participation remains off the table.
The international red tape is a notable wrinkle for a program that landed a legitimate contributor overseas. Loubens, a 6-foot-1 guard, spent her most recent season with La Roche Vendée Basket Club, where she posted 6.5 points and 2.5 rebounds per game while shooting an efficient 63.9 percent from the field across 24 outings. Those numbers reflect a player who was already producing at a high level in professional French competition before making the jump to college basketball — which makes the delay in getting her cleared all the more frustrating from a program-building standpoint.
Loubens committed to Dawn Staley’s program on April 29, rounding out this year’s roster as the 15th and final signee. Her situation now underscores one of the less-discussed challenges of recruiting international talent: even a fully committed, talented addition can be held up by bureaucracy that has nothing to do with basketball.
Timing matters here, too. Under NCAA rules, once summer school begins, teams are permitted an eight-week window for organized team activities — a clock that’s already ticking. South Carolina’s roster has been back together in Columbia since June 22, though not everyone arrived precisely on that date. Starting forward Joyce Edwards missed the opening days while still committed to USA Basketball duties, and sophomore guard Agot Makeer didn’t arrive until June 30 after being called up to Canada’s Senior Women’s National Team training camp.
Those absences, unlike Loubens’, were simply matters of scheduling around international competition obligations — players who were eligible to practice the moment they touched down. Loubens’ situation is a different animal entirely: she’s present, ready, and willing, but sidelined by paperwork rather than basketball logistics. For a coaching staff working within a tight eight-week developmental window before the season ramps up, every day she isn’t cleared to practice is a day of chemistry-building and system installation she’s missing relative to her 14 teammates already on the floor.
