Cavaliers Now

Virginia Turns Attention to 2025 Recruiting Class Following May Transfer Haul

Matt Newton

Tony Bennett instructs his team during the Virginia men's basketball game against Georgia Tech at McCamish Pavilion.
Tony Bennett instructs his team during the Virginia men's basketball game against Georgia Tech at McCamish Pavilion. / Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports
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The month of May saw Tony Bennett and his coaching staff completely revamp the Virginia men's basketball roster for the 2024-2025 season with a series of transfer additions. In doing so, the Cavaliers filled out their scholarship roster for next season with an influx of young talent.

While that can and should be extremely beneficial for UVA's success on the court next season and beyond, it also carries possibly problematic ripple effects for the program's efforts on the high school recruiting trail. Specifically with regards to the class of 2025, on which Bennett and his staff are now focusing their attention this summer, Virginia has only two open scholarship slots for the 2025-2026 season. When you factor in potential logjams at specific positions at which UVA has now added transfers with two or three years of eligibility, the overall effect is that some of the team's top recruiting targets in the class of 2025 are now less likely to choose the Cavaliers than they were a month ago.

Read more: Virginia Basketball: Complete Overview of UVA's Offseason Roster Moves

With that said, things could still shake out in a number of ways and Virginia is still vigorously pursuing its priority prospects and extending new offers to the 2025 recruiting class. In the past couple of weeks, Tony Bennett made two new offers to 2025 targets from Kyle Guy's old stomping grounds in Indiana.

On May 21st, Virginia offered Brady Koehler, a 6'9" forward out of Cathedral High School in Indianapolis. 247Sports has Koehler ranked as the No. 50 small forward in the class of 2025 and the No. 11 prospect from the state of Indiana. Virginia joined a list of programs to offer Koehler that includes Wake Forest, Iowa, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, Rutgers, Stanford, Butler, and DePaul.

On Wednesday evening (May 29th), Virginia joined the highly-competitive recruiting battle for Braylon Mullins, a 6'5" shooting guard from Greenfield-Central just west of Indianapolis. A four-star prospect, Mullins is rated the No. 95 overall recruit in the country, the No. 14 shooting guard in the class of 2025, and the No. 6-ranked player in the state of Indiana per 247Sports. Also offering Mullins on Wednesday was Dan Hurley and the two-time reigning national champion UConn Huskies. Virginia and UConn joined a long and impressive list of suitors for Mullins that includes Kansas, North Carolina, Purdue, Alabama, Michigan State, Creighton, Tennessee, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, Stanford, Louisville, and others.

With Virginia extending offers to Koehler and Mullins, the Cavaliers have active offers out to 15 players from the recruiting class of 2025:

Point Guard/Combo Guard: Chance Mallory (Charlottesville, VA), Acaden Lewis (Washington, DC), Jalen Reece (Orlando, FL), Jalen Haralson (LaPorte, IN), Derek Dixon (Washington, DC), Adrien Stevens (Potomac, MD)
Shooting guard: Braylon Mullins (Greenfield, IN)
Small forward: Nate Ament (Warrenton, VA), London Jemison (Oakdale, CT), Jackson Keith (Durham, NC), Brady Koehler (Indianapolis, IN)
Power Forward: Bryson Tiller (Atlanta, GA), Niko Bundalo (Hudson, OH), Cam Ward (Marlboro, MD)
Center: Xavion Staton (Las Vegas, NV)

Of those active offers, UVA basketball recruiting expert Hooz Got Next says point guards Chance Mallory and Acaden Lewis and forwards London Jemison and Brady Koehler are the priority prospects with which the Cavaliers are best positioned.

Mallory in particular is an interesting one to keep an eye on. The St. Anne's-Belfield star and Charlottesville native has obvious inherent ties to the program, but Virginia now has two young point guards in redshirt freshman Christian Bliss and Kansas State transfer Dai Dai Ames, who respectively have four and three years of eligibility remaining. The UVA coaching staff appears to still have the full-court press on Mallory, checking in on him multiple times on the AAU circuit this month.

Stay tuned for more updates on Virginia's recruiting efforts in the class of 2025.

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Matt Newton
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.