Starting guards Isaac McKneely and Andrew Rohde have entered their names into the 2025 college basketball transfer portal, raising the total from the 2024-2025 UVA Basketball starting lineup in the portal to four.
Dai Dai Ames, a third starting guard, and Blake Buchanan, a starter in the post, had already indicated their plans to enter the portal before it formally opened at midnight Sunday night/Monday morning.
McKneely reportedly included a “Do Not Contact” tag with his portal entry, which could indicate that he has a landing spot in mind already, though the speculation is that he is open to returning to Virginia to play his senior season under new head coach Ryan Odom.
If that were to be the case, he could be playing the give me more money game with UVA over his NIL valuation.
I’m not seeing or hearing anything specific to Rohde’s plans.
Both were among the guys that I wrote about last week that I viewed as priorities for the incoming coaching staff.
ICYMI
McKneely was the leading scorer for Virginia in 2024-2025, averaging 14.4 points per game, shooting 43.9 percent from the floor and 42.1 percent from three.
Odom’s system creates more opportunities for perimeter shooters – his team at VCU this past season averaged 28.6 three-point attempts per game, ranking in the Top 25 nationally.
That would seem to make McKneely, a big off-guard at 6’4”, a priority for Odom.
Rohde improved dramatically from Year 1 to Year 2 at UVA after transferring from St. Thomas in the Summit League following a solid freshman year there.
The 6’6” combo guard averaged 9.3 points per game this past season, up from 4.3 points per game as a sophomore, and shot 43.2 percent from the floor and 41.3 percent from three, up from 29.3 percent from the floor and 25.7 percent from three in his sophomore season.
Rohde probably projects as a sixth man in Odom’s rotation.
I don’t have a feel for what the marketplace might be for him in the Power 6, which is where the NIL money is.
I can see Rohde transferring down a level to the mid-majors, but the NIL money isn’t going to be the lure there.
Ames (8.7 ppg, 46.0% FG, 39.7% 3FG) hit his stride late in his sophomore season at UVA after the coaching staff realized that he’s better used as an off-guard rather than at the point, despite his size limitations as an off-guard at 6’1”.
That’s probably why he isn’t a fit at UVA, even with his counting-numbers resurgence down the stretch – from Feb. 1 on, the Kansas State transfer averaged 13.8 points per game.
Ames is a proven scorer, but I wonder about his fit with Power 6 contenders, given his size.
Buchanan is a former four-star recruit who just has not worked out. The issue: he is still too lithe (listed at 6’11”, 227) to be able to bang in the post in the ACC night-in, night-out, and he just didn’t seem to develop at all in his two seasons in Charlottesville.
To be fair to the kid, that’s probably an indictment on the coaching staff more than on the kid.
With two years of eligibility, I would expect Buchanan to get some offers from Power 6 schools, just based on his potential, and the expectation that he would get better with better coaching.
Update: Monday, 5:21 p.m. TJ Power has also entered the transfer portal, which is no surprise at all.
Power, a sophomore, was a five-star prep recruit who played his first year at Duke, where he got limited run – 7.0 minutes per game in 26 appearances, in which he averaged 2.1 points per game.
Power was in the starting lineup for Virginia’s first five games in November, but didn’t do much with the opportunity, averaging 2.8 points and 2.4 rebounds in 18.8 minutes per game.
He lost his starting position after that, and was a healthy scratch in seven of UVA’s last 10 games.
Update: Monday, 5:56 p.m. Anthony Robinson became the sixth member of the 2024-2025 UVA Basketball roster to hit the transfer portal on Monday.
Robinson, a redshirt freshman, became a fan favorite down the stretch of his redshirt freshman season, but being brutally honest here, he’s still a project.
There’s a reason, even as he started to get minutes and show some promise in the last few weeks of the season, that he didn’t get off the bench for the Wake and Georgia Tech games in the last couple of weeks of the season – his footwork is still suspect, making him (and the rest of the defense, when he’s on the floor) vulnerable in the pick-and-roll and on screens.
We could see Robinson transfer down from the Power 6 level to the middle of the mid-majors and put up decent numbers for somebody going forward.
Update: Tuesday, 7:34 p.m. Jacob Cofie is in the portal, and I don’t like this one.
Cofie, a rising sophomore, is the only big that I’d prioritize from the 2024-2025 roster, and it’d be based entirely on potential, not necessarily what we saw from him on the court in his freshman season.
I’m assuming his stunted development is the result of poor big-man coaching, and that the NBA talent that we saw in spurts will start to come out once he gets better coaching.
Cofie is solid around the rim (56-of-80, 70 percent), but not as much on paint jumpers (15-of-34, 44.1 percent) and in the midrange (9-of-27, 33.3 percent).
The issue on his jumpers is a tendency to fade away on his shots, which, fortunately, can be coached out of you.
Cofie shot 75 percent from the foul line, which should translate into better numbers on jumpers than what we saw – including his attempts from three, Cofie was 31.7 percent on his jumpers this past season.
Cofie rates as a solid rebounder – his 9.1 percent offensive-rebound rate is in the 62nd percentile nationally, and his 19.1 percent defensive-rebound rate is in the 75th percentile nationally, per CBB Analytics.
And again, I assume he only gets better with better big-man coaching.
Update: Thursday, 6:34 p.m. Today’s portal update adds freshman guard Ishan Sharma and the mysterious Christian Bliss to the mix.
First, Bliss, happy trails.
With Sharma, the kid had his moments – four made threes in the 59-41 win over Bethune-Cookman on Dec. 12, 10 points in 18 minutes off the bench in the 54-52 loss to SMU on Jan. 15, eight points in 13 minutes off the bench in the 75-75 loss to Virginia Tech on Feb. 1.
The kid seems to play with moxie, and I can see him being a contributor at the Power 6 level.
Sharma could be the one that we really miss when we look up in a couple of years and see him putting up good numbers somewhere.
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Chris Graham
