The mass departure from the Idaho State women’s basketball program just continued.

Freshmen Kayla Salmons and Sarae Beveridge have entered the transfer portal, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation, becoming the eighth and ninth Bengals to transfer since the end of last season.

Salmons averaged four minutes in 19 games, while Beveridge did not see action. She was a walk-on who the program planned to put on scholarship in the fall.

On Thursday, the Bengals lost freshmen Anaya Bernard and Brooke Malone to the transfer portal. On Sunday, these two additional freshmen made the same decision.

Now, 12 Idaho State players from last season’s team won’t be on next year’s: Estefi Ors, Dora Goles and Ellie Smith have graduated and will move on, while nine others have decided to transfer: Diaba Konate, Tomekia Whitman, Jordan Sweeney, Paisley Specht, Montana Oltrogge, Bernard, Malone — and now Salmons and Beveridge.

In recent weeks, after all-conference players like Konate and Whitman entered the portal, ISU could absorb the losses by looking to the future. The Bengals may have lost two veterans, but they still rostered enticing freshmen, players with the potential to develop and keep the program humming along.

But now almost all those players have transferred as well. ISU now has just one returning starter, Callie Bourne, plus six other players: Finley Garnett, Ivanna Murillo, Carsyn Boswell and Livi Bevao (both of whom missed last season with an injury) plus two freshmen who didn’t play last year, Sophia Covello and Mia Flor.

That could be something to build on, but the problem is that outside of Bourne, those players averaged 0.9 points in three minutes per game, though that number is skewed by Bevao's season-ending injury. Either way, that puts Idaho State in a tricky spot: With so many departures, how does the team return to the heights it reached in the last two years, like a spot in the 2021 NCAA Tournament and back-to-back conference regular-season championships?

The answer might involve the culprit that put ISU in this position in the first place: the transfer portal. The Bengals will likely have to look outside the program for reinforcements. Only time will tell what those look like.