How Former UW Basketball Players Are Doing with Their New Teams

We track eight one-time Huskies who transferred out.

They've been to court — in order to get on the court — litigating before playing basketball. Some of them score a lot of points these days. Few have hit the motherlode in terms of winning games.

These are former University of Washington players who have transferred out in recent seasons, not seeing a future for themselves in Montlake.

Guards RaeQuan Battle and Keyon Menifield turned up at West Virginia and Arkansas, respectively, with neither playing right away. Battle had to sit out because he was a double transfer from the UW and Montana while Menifield was ruled academically ineligible. 

Court rulings, however, reversed those roadblocks and made them immediately active in December. 

Battle, a first-team All-Big Sky selection last year, has started 17 games and averages 17.7 points per game for a sorry 9-18 Mountaineers team that answers to an interim coach after Bob Huggins resigned last summer over a DUI arrest. 

The high point for the sleek 6-foot-5 senior guard from Marysville, Washington, has been a 91-85 victory over Kansas in January in which Battle went for 23 points. Otherwise, his team has gone 5-12 with him on the floor.

Menifield, a 6-foot-1 Michigan native who left the UW a year ago following his freshman season, found a judge to grant him a waiver to play in spite of his lagging grades. 

For a 14-13 Razorbacks team, he's averaged 8.5 points in 13 outings, down from the 10 a game he got in Seattle, and he's started four times. Arkansas is 6-7 in games he's played. The ultra-quick guard came up with a 32-point outing in a 106-90 victory over North Carolina-Wilmington in late December.

Ex-Husky guard Marcus Tsohonis is finishing up his long-winding college career at Long Beach State, his third stop following the UW and Virginia Tech. The 6-foot-3 senior guard from Portland, Oregon, has made it work for him in Long Beach, averaging 14.1 points last year and 17.1 this season for an 18-10 team. 

Tsohonis was named as an honorable-mention All-Big West selection in his first year. He holds the Long Beach State record with 46 points in a game, coming against UC San Diego last season, and dropped in 35 points in a 94-88 upset of Michigan in Ann Arbor in December.

After a season at Michigan and three more at the UW, shooting guard Cole Bajema has been a starter for all 27 games for a 16-11 Utah team. The 6-foot-7 graduate student from Lynden, Washington, averages 8.7 points for the Utes, slightly down from his 8.8 for the Huskies last season. Against his old team this winter, he scored 10 and 11 points while splitting the games.

Big man J'Raan Brooks, a Seattle product who previously played for USC and the UW, has stayed healthy this season at UC San Diego. He missed all of the 2021-22 season for the Toros with a knee injury and all but eight games last year with a similar issue.

This time, the 6-foot-9, 215-pound senior has appeared and started in all 28 games for a 19-9 team, averaging 5.1 points and 3.5 rebounds. Last November, he faced the Huskies at Alaska Airlines Arena, but went scoreless in 10 minutes of action during an 83-56 defeat. There's no one on the UW roster who played him.

Langston Wilson is at Milwaukee-Wisconsin, where he's started 10 of 26 games for a 15-14 team. The 6-foot-9 graduate student from the Philadelphia area averages 5.9 points and 4.3 rebounds per outing, a step up from his two-year numbers with the Huskies of 2.2 and 2.4.

Tyler Linhardt, a 6-foot-7 redshirt freshman forward from Seattle, played in 20 games for an 11-17 Idaho team, starting six, before injuring a foot and sitting down. He averaged 8.3 points and 3.4 rebounds. 

Linhardt had a high game of 18 points in a 77-72 defeat to Portland State and scored 16 on 7-for-10 shooting in an 82-64 loss to Stanford.

Finally, Jackson Grant, the 6-foot-10, 235-pound center, McDonald's All-American and Gatorade Player of the Year selection from Olympia, Washington, continues to struggle to find his place in the college basketball world. 

After committing to Montana and following then-Grizzlies coach Danny Sprinkle to Utah State a year ago, Grant has appeared in just four early-season games for a 22-5 team, collectively scoring 11 points and grabbing 6 rebounds while playing 28 minutes. At least he's winning.

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