Virginia
Virginia Basketball: Complete Overview of UVA’s Offseason Roster Moves
It took a little longer than anticipated and turned out a little differently than many expected, but Virginia has wrapped up its transfer portal recruiting and filled out its scholarship roster for the 2024-2025 men’s basketball season. After a quiet first six weeks of the offseason, Tony Bennett went on a recruiting spree in the transfer portal and snagged four transfers (five if you count walk-on Carter Lang) in the span of 11 days. Combined with a pair of promising incoming freshmen UVA signed last fall, these seven additions have completely transformed Virginia’s outlook for next season.
It’s still very difficult to project how the Cavaliers will look next season with so many new faces and it’s an even greater challenge to predict if UVA will be better than last season (and by how much) entering the post-Reece Beekman era. But at the very least, the Hoos will certainly look different with six players heading out the door and seven new ones coming in. We’re going to try to quantify how Virginia’s roster changed with some relevant statistics and recruiting data in an attempt to clarify UVA’s outlook for next season.
To start, let’s recap Virginia’s personnel moves from this offseason:
Virginia Men’s Basketball 2024 Offseason Timeline
March 19th: Virginia’s season ends, concluding the careers of Jordan Minor and Jake Groves, who both exhausted their collegiate eligibility.
April 6th: Redshirt freshman wing Leon Bond III enters the transfer portal
April 16th: Sophomore forward Ryan Dunn declares for 2024 NBA Draft
April 17th: Senior guard Reece Beekman declares for 2024 NBA Draft
April 19th: Redshirt junior guard Dante Harris enters the transfer portal
May 4th: Florida State guard Jalen Warley transfers to Virginia
May 6th: Duke forward TJ Power transfers to Virginia
May 6th: San Diego State forward Elijah Saunders transfers to Virginia
May 7th: Vanderbilt forward Carter Lang transfers to Virginia (walk-on)
May 15th: Kansas State guard Dai Dai Ames transfers to Virginia
Here’s a look at how Virginia’s roster changed from the 2023-2024 season to the 2024-2025 season in terms of departures, additions, and returners:
Departures
Exhausted Eligibility: Jordan Minor, Jake Groves
Transfer Portal: Leon Bond III (Northern Iowa), Dante Harris (undecided)
Declared for Draft: Ryan Dunn, Reece Beekman
Additions
Incoming Transfers: Jalen Warley (G, FSU), TJ Power (F, Duke), Elijah Saunders (F, SDSU), Dai Dai Ames (G, KSU), Carter Lang (F, Vandy) **walk-on
Incoming Freshmen: F Jacob Cofie (Seattle, Washington), G Ishan Sharma (Milton, Ontario)
Returners
Guards: Taine Murray, Isaac McKneely, Andrew Rohde, Elijah Gertrude, Christian Bliss
Forwards: Blake Buchanan, Anthony Robinson
Next, here’s a breakdown of what Virginia lost and gained in terms of scoring and minutes played:
Departures
Scoring: Reece Beekman (14.3 ppg) + Ryan Dunn (8.1) + Jake Groves (7.4) + Jordan Minor (4.3) + Leon Bond (4.1) + Dante Harris (2.5) + Tristan How (0.7) = 41.4/62.9 = 65.8% of scoring
Minutes: Beekman (1114 minutes) + Dunn (935) + Groves (690) + Minor (471) + Bond (296) + Harris (329) + How (17) = 3,852/6,875 = 56.0% of minutes
Additions
Jalen Warley: 7.5 ppg, 33 games, 32 starts, 24.1 mpg at Florida State
TJ Power: 2.1 ppg, 26 games, 0 starts, 7.0 mpg at Duke
Elijah Saunders: 6.2 ppg, 37 games, 21 starts, 20.2 mpg at San Diego State
Dai Dai Ames: 5.2 ppg, 31 games, 16 starts, 20.6 mpg at Kansas State
Carter Lang: 1.8 ppg, 24 games, 7 starts, 11.6 mpg at Vanderbilt
Virginia lost 65.8% of its scoring and 56.0% of its minutes from last season. Isaac McKneely returns as the team’s leading scorer at 12.3 ppg and he and Andrew Rohde are the only regular starters returning next year. With their offseason moves, the Cavaliers have essentially traded experience for youth and potential talent. Taine Murray and Jalen Warley will be Virginia’s only seniors in their final years of eligibility and there are only five total upperclassmen on the roster. Of UVA’s seven new players, six have at least two years of eligibility remaining, including four who have three years of eligibility remaining.
Here’s Virginia’s current scholarship roster for the 2024-2025 season sorted by position and including details on each player’s eligibility remaining:
PG: Jalen Warley (1 year), Dai Dai Ames (3 years) Christian Bliss (4 years)
SG: Isaac McKneely (2 years), Elijah Gertrude (3 years), Ishan Sharma (4 years)
SF: Andrew Rohde (2 years), Taine Murray (1 year)
PF: TJ Power (3 years), Elijah Saunders (2 years), Jacob Cofie (4 years)
C: Blake Buchanan (3 years), Anthony Robinson (4 years)
While the transfer additions don’t make up for what UVA lost in terms of scoring on paper, the Cavaliers’ hope is that they’ve picked up TJ Power, Elijah Saunders, and Dai Dai Ames right before experiencing leap points in their respective careers, while Carter Lang could develop into a contributor over the course of his career and is also a great story as he returns to his hometown of Charlottesville. Jalen Warley, meanwhile, provides much-needed backcourt experience as well as versatility on both ends of the floor as a 6’7″ guard and playmaker.
Power and Saunders address Virginia’s most significant position of need at power forward, while Warley and Ames give UVA two more options to compete with redshirt freshman Christian Bliss for minutes at point guard. Some questions remain about how these relatively unproven players will come together to address UVA’s roster needs, but there’s no question that these additions have significantly improved Virginia’s prospects for the future with so many players coming in with multiple years of eligibility remaining.
From a talent standpoint, it’s almost a waste of time to estimate the impact of transfers or high school recruits before seeing how they fit in Virginia’s system. And high school recruiting rankings should always be taken with a grain of salt, but they more often than not provide fairly accurate and helpful measurements of individual talent. With that said, here’s a look at each player’s high school prospect rankings, per the 247Sports Composite:
High School Recruiting Numbers (247Sports Composite)
Incoming Transfers
Jalen Warley: four-star, No. 43 overall
TJ Power: five-star, No. 20 overall
Elijah Saunders: three-star, No. 191 overall
Dai Dai Ames: four-star, No. 64 overall
Carter Lang: three-star, No. 172 overall
Incoming Freshmen
Jacob Cofie: four-star, No. 82 overall
Ishan Sharma: three-star, No. 229 overall
Returners
Blake Buchanan: four-star, No. 76 overall
Andrew Rohde: three-star, No. 316 overall
Taine Murray: four-star, No. 89 overall
Isaac McKneely: four-star, No. 63 overall
Elijah Gertrude: four-star, No. 63 overall
Anthony Robinson: three-star, No. 268 overall
Christian Bliss: three-star, No. 162 overall
Losses:
Reece Beekman: four-star, No. 70 overall
Ryan Dunn: four-star, No. 130 overall
Leon Bond III: four-star, No. 68 overall
Dante Harris: three-star, No. 389 overall
Jake Groves: N/A
Jordan Minor: N/A
From its 2023-2024 roster, Virginia lost three former four-star prospects and two former top 100 players. The Cavaliers gained four players who were either four or five-star high school prospects and four former top 100 recruits. Virginia will have eight players who were four or five-star high school prospects and eight former top 100 recruits on its roster in the 2024-2025 season. Going strictly off of recruiting rankings (again, grain of salt), this will be the most talented roster Tony Bennett has had in his time at Virginia.
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LOUISA, Va. — Michael Shull never imagined that a Democrat from the wealthy suburbs of Washington would represent his community in Congress. His corner of Virginia, with its sprawling farms and winding country roads, has been electing Republicans for more than three decades.
Then came an unusual nationwide redistricting battle, with Democrats and Republicans redrawing congressional lines to boost their chances in November’s midterm elections. Virginia could be next as voters consider a new map that would pair conservative rural areas with liberal suburbs, diluting Republicans’ electoral clout.
“Politicians should be elected to be their people’s voice,” said Shull, a Republican member of Augusta County’s board of supervisors. “Not their party’s voice.”
The vote on the constitutional amendment is on April 21, and early balloting has begun. If voters pass the referendum and it survives a court challenge, Shull’s area within the county would be split between the 7th and 9th Congressional Districts. While the 9th District would be the state’s lone Republican stronghold, the 7th District would resemble a lobster with the long tail beginning in Democrat-dominated Arlington and two claws reaching south into rural communities.
Congressional districts are usually redrawn once a decade, but President Donald Trump started a chain reaction last year by encouraging Texas Republicans to devise a new map to help the party in November. After a cascade of redistricting efforts, Republicans believe they can win a combined nine more U.S. House seats in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, while Democrats think they can win a total of six more seats in California and Utah. Virginia could give Democrats an extra four seats — enough to overturn the GOP’s slim majority, at least as things stand now.
“It’s about making sure that we fight back to what Trump’s done,” said U.S. Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., He said the party needs to persuade voters that the referendum is “not about embracing gerrymandering.”
“I feel optimistic, but it’s close,” he said.
A print edition of the Goochland Gazette, with a front page story on the Virginia redistricting referendum, lies on a table at GG’s Pizza as members of the Goochland Democratic Committee Jen Strozier, Doug Mock, Chris Svoboda, Richard Grebe and Judi Sheppard hold a lunch meeting on future get-out-the-vote efforts, Thursday, April 2, 2026, in Maiden, Va. Credit: AP/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
A rural-urban divide
The referendum comes at a moment when Virginia Democrats have tried to make up ground in rural areas. Last year, Democrat Abigail Spanberger campaigned for governor in oyster towns and agrarian hamlets to engage with more conservative voters. Before that winning campaign, she had represented a congressional district that mixed city suburbs, exurbs and adjacent rural communities.
“Anyone who’s doing their job will be responsive to the communities that they seek to represent,” Spanberger said.
But her results were mixed. In counties where fewer people lived in rural areas, she outperformed Democrat Kamala Harris’ Virginia showing in the 2024 presidential race by an average of 6 percentage points or 7 percentage points. In more rural counties, Spanberger gained about 2 percentage points to 4 percentage points.
Democrat Anthony Flaccavento, former congressional candidate and co-founder of the nonprofit Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, is torn over the referendum.
Members of the Goochland Democratic Committee Jen Strozier, Doug Mock, Chris Svoboda, Richard Grebe and Judi Sheppard hold a lunch meeting on future get-out-the-vote efforts for the Virginia redistricting referendum, Thursday, April 2, 2026, at GG’s Pizza in Maiden, Va. Credit: AP/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
“At some level, it feels like kicking the can down the road -– which is something that my party has done for a long time –- when it comes to winning back rural and working-class voters,” Flaccavento said.
A welcome change for some
Democrats in rural areas who are tired of being outnumbered by their Republican neighbors are embracing the redistricting plan.
“Fight Back, Vote Yes,” said a sign at a No Kings protest in Louisa County. A second said, “Vote Yes. Stop ICE. No Kings.”
State Del. Dan Helmer, who helped spearhead the redistricting effort, greeted protesters and spoke to the cheering crowd. Helmer is now one of at least four Democrats running in the 7th District.
Helmer said Republicans “think that in red areas like Louisa and in rural areas, that people don’t know what’s going on. But I’m looking around right now, I see strong, proud patriots who know exactly what is going on, who know that we have an aspiring dictator who is trying to take away our democracy.”
Jennifer Lee, who has lived in Louisa for 33 years, said she was eager to support the new district lines. Lee said she felt Republicans were perpetuating a double standard, falsely claiming the 2020 presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden was stolen from Trump but accepting his push to eliminate Democratic seats through gerrymandering.
“That’s their slogan, right? ‘Stop the steal,’” Lee said. “But they started ‘the steal.’ They’re stealing the seats now in all these districts.”
Democrats see a fight for survival
At a town hall hosted by Democrats at a rural Goochland County recreation center, voters nibbled on finger foods and passed around bottled water as they debated whether redistricting violated some kind of moral code.
“I’m sorry, morality just goes out the door right now. We have to do what it takes for us to survive,” said Bruce Silverman, a local nephrologist. He was voting “yes.”
At one point, Roberta Thacker-Oliver stood up to talk. She votes in the rural 9th District, which would become even more Republican with the new map.
“In the redistricting, the 9th is going to become bigger and redder,” she said, adding, “I need to know what to tell my community about why they need to take one for the team.”
“What do we tell them?” she said.
_
PDF Box
#17 Notre Dame (19-5, 8-3) – 1 | #4 Virginia (18-3, 10-1) – 4
DOUBLES – 3, 2
1. Dominko/Gregg (ND) vs. #5 Dahlberg/Dietrich (UVA), 2-4, 4-4, 5-4, 6-5, unfinished
2. Rice/Brockett (UVA) def. #47 Llorens Saracho/Nad (ND), 7-5
3. Santamarta/Kim (UVA) def. Lee/Patrick (ND), 6-0
SINGLES – 2, 4, 6
1. #2 Dylan Dietrich (UVA) def. #15 Sebastian Dominko (ND), 6-2, 2-6, 6-2
2. #14 Keegan Rice (UVA) def. #72 Perry Gregg (ND), 6-3, 6-3
3. #40 Andres Santamarta Roig (UVA) vs. Giuseppe Cerasuolo (ND), 6-3, 6-5, unfinished
4. Peter Nad (ND) def. #102 Jangjun Kim (UVA), 1-6, 6-1, 6-3
5. Kyran Magimay (ND) vs. Stiles Brockett (UVA), 6-1, 5-7, 1-1, unfinished
6. Douglas Yaffa (UVA) def. Luis Llorens Saracho (ND), 6-3, 0-6, 6-1
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