photo by: Mike Gunnoe/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas guard Elle Evans celebrates a play by a teammate against UCF during the Big 12 Championships at the T-Mobile Center on Wednesday, March 4, 2026 in Kansas City, Mo.

It was never a guarantee that Elle Evans would continue playing basketball after her career at Kansas was done.

The 3-point sharpshooter, who finished her two years in Lawrence having made 43.6% of her attempts from beyond the arc to match Sandy Shaw for the program record, got worn down as her senior season was drawing to a close.

“Honestly, I think a lot of it was kind of how my body was feeling at the end of it,” Evans said of her initial uncertainty. “I feel so old now. I’m like, ‘I really don’t know — my body might really not be sustained for it.'”

But by the time the year ended she was healthy, and in conversations with her family and basically everyone she consulted, she kept hearing, “If you have the opportunity to continue playing, and go travel the world and go overseas, you might as well.”

In the end, the way Evans saw it, she could go and get a regular job in five years — her degree is in business — but she couldn’t leave a regular job to suddenly resume playing basketball in five years. And so come August, Evans will make the trip out to Costa Masnaga, Italy, near the nation’s northern border, to play for Basket Costa — a team recently promoted to the top level of Italian women’s basketball after its 95-81 victory over San Giovanni Valdarno on May 17.

She said she’s excited for what awaits — even as she is still learning about what’s to come.

“I think after talking with the coaches and stuff, I think that it’s just going to be a team where it’s going to be a grind,” Evans told the Journal-World in an interview on Wednesday. “I really don’t know what I’m getting myself into, so to speak. It’s going to be a brand-new experience for me, but also for them too.”

Once Evans decided that she was in fact going to try to play overseas, and hired an agent, a process she compared to recruiting — “They’re interviewing me, but I’m also interviewing them because they’re the ones that are representing me and talking to all these teams” — Italy was always one of her top choices.

“I think part of me obviously wanted to do it culture- and actual-physical-location-wise, but another thing is I wanted to be playing basketball at a competitive level,” Evans said.

She quickly learned that there were plenty of beautiful countries or ones to which she could theoretically transition easily in which the level of basketball just wasn’t particularly high. Italy and Spain were her top choices, Turkey and Croatia were in a sort of middle tier, and at a certain point her philosophy was that if she only got one offer and it was in Russia, “I guess I’m going to Russia, you know?”

But she heard from Basket Costa just three days after the team secured its promotion, she said: “That was honestly a really good sign, meaning that they really wanted me.”

Evans said she knows she’ll have to adjust to the physicality of the European style. She complimented the “very straightforward” nature of Costa coach Facundo Bereziartua, who told her on a video chat that he was going to get in her face and yell at her. She will be headed to Costa along with her fellow American import, Alyssa Crockett, a 6-foot-2 forward who played four seasons as a rotational player at Michigan: “I have high hopes,” Evans said.

Evans posted 8.3 points per game her senior year at KU in a somewhat reduced role after she had averaged 14.4 points and was an all-conference honorable mention as a junior.

“I would not have changed my decision to come to KU for the world,” Evans said. “I would not be doing what I’m doing or where I’m at today without my two years at KU. I’ve met amazing people, have experienced great things.”

She also finished her time as a Jayhawk in some sort of style by winning basically everything it was possible to win at the College 3-Point Championship — a coed competition called the Team Shootout, the women’s individual competition and then a head-to-head matchup with men’s champion CJ Gunn of DePaul for all the marbles.

“I didn’t even know what to expect going into it,” Evans said. “I was like, ‘Oh, whatever, I’m just out there shooting.'”

She added that she didn’t even know she was going to be in the Team Shootout before she got there. She also didn’t expect it to receive so much attention: “I don’t know who even would go to this thing. But the line was wrapped around the building.” Ultimately, she experienced significant success with her family in attendance.

“It was such a cool way to end my college experience,” she said.

Now she’s on to the pros. It’ll be just the second time in Europe for the native of Edwardsville, Illinois, who went on a foreign tour to Greece before her freshman year at North Dakota State.

“I’ve got my Duolingo ready,” Evans said.

photo by: Intersport

Kansas senior Elle Evans is photographed with her medal from the College 3-Point Championship Battle of Champions on Friday, April 3, 2026, in Indianapolis.