Daugherty Valley is in San Ramon. That was the home to both Robby Beasley and Connor Sevilla. He just transferred from Dublin (just like Robby Beasley)..
the EBAL in my neighborhood. He was Dublin’s best player last treat (all league, all area team) but is jumping across the city limits line to go to Daugherty. Bring this trio of EBAL/Daugherty players, I can’t remember anyone from this area coming to Davis.
Good early signing. Les seems to be getting the 6'5" to 6'7" wing type players (Cooper, Roberson, Sangster, Unuakhalu and Gilchrist) so I'm sure we'll see more positionless style of ball. Good tough athletic switching defense leading to transition baskets, or pull it back out and let TY or others beat the defense off the dribble. Should be a fun team to watch.
I think we had to agree to significantly increase the funding for basketball with a focus on elevating our level of competitiveness as a condition of joining the Mountain West.
Can’t win with high school kids at this level. Les needs the support to pay market rate for guys in order to compete in the Big West let alone with Nevada. The good teams are old.
The MBB transfer portal officially opens on Monday, March 24th and will be open for 30 days. I expect we will see a ton of players enter the portal and I would imagine that Les and his staff will be actively looking for possible transfers for the 2025-26 season.
Maybe hire Coach Gross coach the men's team ? Not a joke. She would do a great job. Outside of the box thinking. Then the women's team could hire someone from this message board since we're all experts here.
I'm not surprised that Jac Mani and Derek Sangster have entered the portal.
Mani came here as a highly regarded HS recruit but he was injured much of the time. He was finally available at the start of conference play this year but only saw action in 10 games for a total of 55 minutes. He was praised early on by Les as having the potential to become and outstanding big man for the Ags. He has a beautiful 3 point shot but never showed the physicality and ability to defend in the interior.
Sangster is a bit of a mystery. He was a highly sought after HS recruit and signed with Princeton. I was expecting him to play a major role this year but he seldom saw any action at all. He played in 8 games for a total of 33 minutes. He did not look "comfortable" in the few minutes that I saw him play.
Carl Daugherty Jr and Nils Cooper were the two transfers that worked out very well for us this year and should be even better next year. Jamaal Unuakhalu began seeing action late in the season and showed promise. He has good length, defends well and appears to have an ability to score inside. I expect we'll see more of him next year.
Curiously, Sione Losé is being listed as "Offered" on verbalcommits.com . That's either a mistake or maybe he wasn't on scholarship...??
I'm not sure but we are losing 6 players to graduation: TY Johnson, Leo DeBruhl, Niko Rocak, Pablo Tamba, Francesco Borra and Lucas Prongos. So if Mani and Sangster do not return, that's would be 8 possible open spots. We do have Jalen Stokes and Chase Rawlins coming in as true freshmen.
Nice find, CAF. It's not easy finding info on players in the MBB portal. I hope Les and his staff are able to bring in some high quality talent this year as we build towards playing stiffer competition in the MWC in 2026. With 6 graduating seniors and 3 more players in the portal we have a lot of spots to fill.
I think Les really has to go after guys like Jones Jr. if we are going to be competitive in the MW going forward. Very highly rated player coming out of high school, but only got limited minutes as a freshman. If playtime is what he is after he would almost certainly get it at Davis. That being said if NIL and post season asperations are what he wants, it will be tough to compete against schools like Texas Tech.