Elijah Saunders, the last UVA Basketball starter from the 2024-2025 season left standing, is gone, headed to Maryland to play for new coach Buzz Williams.
The 6’8”, 240-pound stretch four could have been a fit in the Ryan Odom system – Odom prioritizes perimeter shooting and rebounding in his fours.
Saunders, a rising senior, had good counting numbers to offer – 10.4 points and 5.0 rebounds per game for Virginia in 2024-2025, on 42.0 percent shooting from the field and 34.7 percent from three.
His productivity fell off a cliff in February and March, though, after his return from a lower-leg injury that had him missing three games.
From Feb. 1 on, Saunders averaged 7.3 points and 4.1 rebounds per game, and shot just 32.2 percent from the floor and 26.3 percent from three.
We know that Odom and his incoming staff got a couple of looks at the 2024-2025 roster via workouts with the team held after Odom was named the head coach on March 22.
Presumably, Odom didn’t see as much value out of Saunders as Williams does.
Related
- UVA Basketball: Jacob Cofie commits to Southern Cal off the portal
- UVA Basketball: Redshirt freshman Anthony Robinson headed to Xavier
- UVA Basketball: Andrew Rohde finds landing spot, at Wisconsin
- UVA Basketball: Isaac McKneely headed to Louisville out of the transfer portal
- UVA Basketball: Dai Dai Ames headed to Cal off the transfer portal
- UVA Basketball: Blake Buchanan headed to Iowa State out of the portal
Odom has two guys coming in to compete for minutes at the four spot – Devin Tillis, a 6’7”, 225-pound grad senior from UC-Irvine, who averaged 13.7 points and 7.8 rebounds per game in the 2024-2025 season, and is a career 38.6 percent shooter from three, and Martin Carrere, a 6’8”, 180-pound kid from France who redshirted this past season at VCU, who shot 41.9 percent from three in seven games with the French national U-18 team that competed in the FIBA Eurobasket Tournament in the summer of 2024.
Tillis looks to be a plug-and-play guy with his experience, while Carrere, with four years of eligibility, would appear to be a developmental guy.
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Chris Graham
