Matt Riley/Virginia Athletics
Robert Jennings Staying at Texas Tech, What's Next for Virginia in the Transfer Portal?
One of Virginia's top transfer portal targets has come off the board as Robert Jennings announced that he will be staying at Texas Tech in a social media post on Tuesday night.
For the last several weeks, it seemed that UVA was a frontrunner to land the transfer commitment from Jennings, who entered the portal after his freshman season at Texas Tech. The Virginia coaching staff had recruited Jennings out of high school and Tony Bennett immediately reconnected with Jennings on a Zoom call when he entered the portal. On April 1st, Jennings cut his list to five schools and included UVA along with St. Louis, Utah, Maryland, and a return to Texas Tech. A few days later, Jennings scheduled an official visit to Virginia for April 14th-16th and shortly after that, Jennings reported that he would only consider two options moving forward: transferring to UVA or returning to Texas Tech.
But just a few days before he was set to make his anticipated visit to Charlottesville, Jennings has apparently nixed that visit to the Cavaliers and will instead be staying at Texas Tech with new head coach Grant McCasland. It's a rather anticlimactic end to his time in the transfer portal as Jennings ends up staying put in Lubbock without taking a single visit to another school.
It's been nearly a month since UVA's season ended and the Cavaliers have yet to make a splash in the transfer portal despite facing some serious roster depletion with eight scholarship players leaving the program this offseason. Virginia is still expected to be an active buyer in the transfer portal, but as is always the case with Tony Bennett and his staff, the Cavaliers are taking it slow and steady and exercising patience as they evaluate, contact, and recruit some of the hundreds of players who are currently in the transfer portal.
UVA is in particular need of reinforcements in the front court, where the departures of Kadin Shedrick, Isaac Traudt, and Francisco Caffaro (transfer portal) as well as Jayden Gardner and Ben Vander Plas (graduation) have left Virginia extremely thin. Virginia's only front court pieces on the 2023-2024 roster as it currently stands are Ryan Dunn and incoming freshman Blake Buchanan.
The top name on Virginia's list of transfer targets at this point is Merrimack forward Jordan Minor, who visited UVA on April 6th and 7th. In an interview with Houston Wilson of Cavs Corner, Minor said he enjoyed his visit and connected well with Tony Bennett and Ryan Dunn. Minor took a visit to Florida Gulf Coast this past weekend and has visits scheduled to Iowa and Seton Hall this weekend.
Meanwhile, Virginia has other transfer targets still on the board, but not much information has come out recently about any of those players scheduling visits to UVA. North Carolina forward Will Shaver has scheduled visits to UAB, Liberty, and Belmont and expressed an interest in taking an official visit to Virginia, but that visit has yet to be scheduled. Other transfer bigs who have been contacted by the Cavaliers include Albany's Jonathan Beagle, Austin Peay's Elijah Hutchins-Everett, Dayton's Mustapha Amzil, and North Texas's Abou Ousmane.
More and more players continue to pour into the portal every single day, including several from the ACC with Florida State's Matthew Cleveland, Boston College's DeMarr Langford Jr., and Syracuse's Jesse Edwards being some of the latest transfer portal entrants. Tony Bennett and the Virginia coaching staff are undoubtedly keeping track of all of the transfer portal activity as they look to address UVA's roster needs for next season.
Keep track of all of Virginia's movement in the transfer portal here: Virginia Basketball Transfer Portal Updates
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