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.
Virginia Basketball Finalizes Scholarship Roster for 2024-2025 Season
Ryan Dunn & Reece Beekman NBA Draft Combine Measurements & Results
Virginia Basketball Lands Commitment From Kansas State Transfer Dai Dai Ames
Virginia Basketball Adds Vanderbilt Transfer Forward Carter Lang
San Diego State Transfer Elijah Saunders Commits to Virginia Basketball
Duke Forward TJ Power Transfers to Virginia Basketball
Virginia Basketball Lands First Transfer Commitment From FSU Guard Jalen Warley
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(WSET) — More than a million Virginians are expected to hit the road for Memorial Day weekend — despite rising gas prices.
Right now, the state average is around $4.30 a gallon. That’s 50 percent higher than it was three months ago, before the war in Iran.
Right now, it will cost you $4.29 a gallon to fill up at the 76 on Langhorne Road. And prices could keep climbing, potentially making this the most expensive summer at the pump in years.
GasBuddy says the national average could hit $4.48 a gallon by Memorial Day, a big jump from $3.14 this time last year.
Prices may keep rising, averaging around $4.80 a gallon throughout the summer.
SEE ALSO: Veto halts bipartisan push to lower medication prices in Virginia
Despite this, experts say many Virginians are still willing to hit the road for the holiday weekend. They are just finding alternative ways to save.
Patrick De Haan, petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, said, “If you’re driving long distances, going 65 miles an hour instead of 75 can boost your fuel efficiency 10 to 25%. The equivalent of getting two gallons for free when you fill up.”
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee when these prices will drop. That is why experts say you should plan ahead and shop around. You can also save by filling up earlier in the week.
Instead of being supportive of the child’s educational endeavors or simply not responding, Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx chose this moment to respond with vitriol.
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President Donald Trump continues to say that negotiations to end the war are happening, while Iran officials deny any talks.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-North Carolina, taught a child a very important lesson. You’re never too young to learn that politicians will fail you.
Foxx made headlines in May when she responded to a 10-year-old Greensboro student named Christian Mango, who wrote to the congresswoman proposing a $5,000 tax credit for people buying electric vehicles. Christian sent the letter as part of a school project where the kids were challenged to write persuasive essays on topics of their choosing.
Instead of being supportive of the child’s educational endeavors or simply not responding, Foxx chose this moment to respond with vitriol, according to a letter dated May 1 that Christian’s mother, Emily, shared on social media.
“Please ask your teacher to explain propaganda to you,” Foxx wrote. “While I will never be able to know, my guess is that your teachers will not give you a good educational experience and help you learn to think, as they are too interested in indoctrinating you. How sad.”
This would be a wild response to receive as any constituent – let alone one who’s still in elementary school. Foxx – a former educator and the former chair of the Committee on Education and the Workforce – should know that the best answer to someone you disagree with is no response. Especially if the person you disagree with is a 10-year-old.
But beyond the embarrassing decision to respond in such a hateful way, there’s irony in Foxx’s response. She is clearly unable to see that the real “propaganda” in this country is coming from the mouth of President Donald Trump and members of the Republican Party. If there is anybody who knows what propaganda looks like, it’s the Republicans.
What is propaganda anyway? Here’s what Republicans have been up to.
In the interest of educating all of us, I decided to look up the term “propaganda” in the dictionary. According to Merriam-Webster, “propaganda” is “the spreading of ideas, information, or rumors for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.”
What does that look like? Well, it looks like everything we’ve seen out of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party for the last decade.
“Propaganda” is Trump’s insistence that he is always right. It’s him putting his name and face on everything. It’s him lying about an election being stolen for years. It’s harming media institutions that call lies into question, calling them the “enemy of the American people.”
It is disparaging immigrants as the source of the country’s problems. It’s using extremist rhetoric in White House communications. It’s posting an AI image depicting yourself as Jesus.
It’s lying to Americans about an economy that is clearly flatlining, that you claim is the best it’s ever been. It’s making promises you can’t deliver on. It’s claiming that tariffs will save the country while costs are simultaneously pushed onto consumers. It’s claiming huge trade deals with China without elaborating on the details. It’s saying gas prices are down when they’re not. This is all propaganda, and it’s affecting the day-to-day lives of Americans who take him at his word.
The GOP has mastered propaganda. They have convinced their supporters that they are the sole saviors of the nation, that they are the only ones who can make America great again, while they’re aggressively making it worse. Meanwhile, educators in this country have to deal with attacks on their profession while making a dismal salary and teaching children that their voices can make a difference.
North Carolina deserves better than Virginia Foxx
Christian’s mother was rightfully angry about the letter in her Instagram post.
“This is a totally inappropriate response to one of her youngest constituents,” Mango wrote. “Clearly she is out of touch. I’m embarrassed that she represents NC.”
Unfortunately, the congresswoman has a history of embarrassing remarks and controversies. She once said that Matthew Shepard’s death was a “hoax,” for which she later apologized. She used a racial epithet on the House floor in 2009. In the aftermath of the Capitol storming on January 6, 2021, Foxx was fined $5,000 for failing to go through metal detectors to get to the House floor. She’s been a loose cannon, and this incident is not out of character.
I’ve long wondered what it would take for Foxx to lose re-election in North Carolina’s fifth district. It seems that, like Trump, no reprehensible comment or behavior is enough to warrant her ouster from Congress. But the people here deserve better than a politician who talks down to anyone she disagrees with. Lord knows they deserve better than someone who chooses to have beef with a fourth grader instead of doing literally anything else that would improve the quality of life in the state.
I hope this incident peels back the curtain and shows Foxx’s constituents who she really is. I just doubt it’ll make much of a difference.
In the meantime, I’m sure Christian and his mother will find comfort in the fact that Republicans are making sure kids everywhere learn exactly what propaganda is.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Sara Pequeño on Bluesky: @sarapequeno.bsky.social
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