Virginia Basketball Incoming First Years Officially Arrive on Grounds

The UVA men's basketball class of 2026 arrived in Charlottesville this weekend

Matt Newton | Jun 20, 2022

The highly-anticipated Virginia men's basketball class of 2026 has arrived on Grounds at last. Incoming first years Isaac McKneely, Isaac Traudt, Leon Bond, and Ryan Dunn moved in over the weekend in Charlottesville and will begin practicing with the team starting this week.

Virginia's 2022 recruiting class is rated the No. 12 overall class in the country and the second-best class in the ACC per 247Sports. The batch of incoming Wahoos form the second highest-rated recruiting class in the Tony Bennett era, second only to the 2016 class of eventual national champions and NBA players Ty Jerome, Kyle Guy, De'Andre Hunter, and Jay Huff.

UVA's four incoming freshmen are all rated four-stars by the major recruiting sites and are each ranked in the top five players from their respective states: Isaac Traudt - No. 1 in Nebraska, Isaac McKneely - No. 1 in West Virginia, Leon Bond - No. 2 in Wisconsin, Ryan Dunn - No. 4 in New York. Traudt (No. 56), McKneely (No. 57), and Bond (No. 60) are ranked in the top 100 of 247's overall national rankings for the class of 2022.

Social media also gave up a glimpse of the lockers for Isaac McKneely, Leon Bond, and Isaac Traudt, including their jersey numbers. McKneely will wear #11, worn last year by Malachi Poindexter, but worn most memorably by 2019 national champion Ty Jerome and three-time All-ACC point guard Othell Wilson (1980-1984).

Per his Instagram story, Leon Bond will wear #35 and will be the first to wear that number in the Tony Bennett era and first Cavalier to wear it since Bob McCormick, who played a total of three games for Virginia in the 2006-2007 season.

Most notably, Travis Watson wore the #35 at Virginia from 1999-2003. A four-year starter who averaged double figures in all four seasons and was named to three All-ACC Second Teams, Watson is 16th on UVA's all-time scoring list with 1,546 career points and second on the all-time rebound list with 1,115 boards, making him the only Cavalier not named Ralph Sampson to record at least 1,000 career rebounds.

Isaac Traudt will wear #23, worn most recently by Kody Stattmann, but most significantly by Mike Scott and and a freshman Justin Anderson, before he adopted the #1 in his sophomore season.

The first years will practice with the team for the next seven weeks and then the Cavaliers will embark on a ten-day excursion to Italy from August 10-20 to play four exhibition games.

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Published Jun 20, 2022

MATT NEWTON

Matt launched Virginia Cavaliers On SI in August of 2021 and has since served as the site's publisher and managing editor, covering all 23 NCAA Division I sports teams at the University of Virginia. He is from Downingtown, Pennsylvania and graduated from UVA in May of 2021.