Texas Basketball: Predicting the Horns first portal pickup of the offseason

Texas basketball fans are very eager to see what newly-hired full-time head coach Rodney Terry and his staff can do to rebuild this roster via the NCAA Transfer Portal this spring. Despite Texas making contact with at least a dozen talented portal players early this offseason, Terry and his staff have yet to lock in the first commit in this transfer class.

Terry and the Longhorns are turning over more than half of last season’s roster due to a variety of reasons. Texas has lost two players to the transfer portal, at least two to the NBA Draft, and more than three due to a lack of eligibility.

Thus, Texas will be going through yet another roster rebuild this offseason. And there are a few names that stick out among the priority portal targets that Terry and the Longhorns could start rebuilding the roster around this spring.

Texas has already hosted a few portal visitors on the Forty Acres in the last couple of weeks. I would imagine that one of those portal visitors are soon-to-be Longhorns in the 2023 transfer class.

Kadin Shedrick and the possible portal additions to start this transfer class for Texas basketball in 2023

Here’s a look at which portal targets could be the first transfer commit for the Longhorns for the 2023 offseason.

Kadin Shedrick, C

The first portal visitor the Longhorns hosted on the 40 this week was the former Virginia Cavaliers redshirt junior center Kadin Shedrick. Texas began hosting Shedrick on a multi-day visit to Austin on April 17.

And it sounds like the visit went pretty well between Shedrick and the Longhorns staff earlier this week. Yet, it was still difficult to get a good read on exactly where Texas stood among the top schools in this portal recruitment in the last couple of days since Shedrick’s visit to the 40 concluded on April 19.

It looked like Shedrick was starting to lean to the Mizzou Tigers when he made the visit to Columbia, MO, immediately following the conclusion of his trip to Austin on April 19. Mizzou head coach Dennis Gates connected well with Shedrick, which led to some buzz being generated in the Tigers’ corner.

In the last 24 hours, though, some of that buzz in Mizzou’s corner has died down a bit. That trend has to be considered favorable in terms of Texas’ standing in the race to land a commitment from Shedrick out of the portal.

Shedrick is now set to visit the Duke Blue Devils for a second time in the last month or so next week after making the trip to see the Xavier Musketeers starting on April 23. Duke still looks the part of the favorite here, but Texas isn’t all that far behind from what we’ve heard in the last 48 hours.