With the dead period lifting for in-person visits on April 12, Texas basketball and head coach Rodney Terry are hitting the NCAA Transfer Portal hard this week. Texas has multiple portal visitors set to make official visits to Austin this weekend.
Who is visiting Texas basketball from the portal this weekend?
The transfer portal will be a big part of the roster construction for Terry and the Longhorns staff during the offseason. Texas has to replace multiple key departures due to exhausted eligibility this spring, including all-time great scoring guard Max Abmas and the 2023-24 Big 12 Most Improved Player, senior big man Dylan Disu.
Questions also remain whether the Longhorns will get either sophomore forward Dillon Mitchell or junior guard Tyrese Hunter back for the 2023-24 season. The only Longhorns players who were core parts of the rotation last that already announced their return for the 2024-25 campaign are sophomore guard Chendall Weaver and redshirt junior center Kadin Shedrick.
If Terry and staff can effectively rebuild the roster via the transfer portal during the spring window, this team should be a contender for the SEC title in their first year competing in the conference in 2024-25.
Texas has the talent coming in via high school recruiting from the 2024 signing class that could elevate the potential of this rotation next season in the SEC. Five-stars Tre Johnson and Cam Scott are immediate impact talents who will add elite scoring punch and quality playmaking to the two-guard/wing rotation next season.
The portal is one of the final pieces to the puzzle for the Longhorns to put together a roster that can contend in the SEC and nationally next year.
Here are four portal targets visiting Texas after the dead period lifts this weekend.
Julian Larry, G
One of many former Indiana State Sycamores transfers who will be visiting Texas this weekend is the 6-foot-3 and 185-pound redshirt junior guard Julian Larry. Texas is hosting Larry for an official visit this weekend.
Larry has also had contact with the Kansas Jayhawks, Baylor Bears, Texas Tech Red Raiders, and Oklahoma Sooners, among many other schools since entering the portal a few days ago.
Texas is a school to watch in this portal recruitment. The Longhorns get the first visit since he entered the portal on April 9. But the other four aforementioned schools that in the Big 12 (at least last season) are still in consideration for Larry in the portal.
Jayson Kent, F
The second former Indiana State transfer who scheduled an official visit to Texas this weekend is redshirt junior forward Jayson Kent. The lengthy 6-foot-7 and 185-pound Illinois native Kent is in the transfer portal for the second time in the last three years.
Kent started his collegiate career at Bradley, where he played two years from 2020-2022.
He broke out at Indiana State during the 2023-24 campaign, scoring in the double digits for the first time in his career while averaging a career-best eight rebounds per game.
Both Kent and Larry were All-Missouri Valley Conference honorees during the 2023-24 season at Indiana State.
Rytis Petraitis, F
The first official visitor that the Longhorns scheduled for this weekend was the former Air Force Falcons sophomore forward Rytis Petraitis. Texas will be the first school that Petraitis visits since he entered the portal earlier this week.
The University of Texas is close to home for the Arlington, TX, native Petraitis. He attended Oak Ridge High School in the DFW Metroplex, just a few hours up I-35 from UT.
Petraitis can help fill some of the depth Texas is losing in the forward rotation for the upcoming season in the SEC in 2024-25. He was one of the top scoring forwards in the Mountain West Conference last season, averaging over 15 points per game for the first time in his career.
Robbie Avila, C*
On Texas Football's Gerry Hamilton reported on April 11 (paid content) that Texas is "currently expected" to host former Indiana State All-MVC sophomore center Robbie Avila in the next week. The exact date that Avila is expected to visit Texas is still unknown, which is why there is an asterisk next to his name on this list.
Something to keep in mind with this portal recruitment is that it has been reported that Avila entered the transfer market with a "do not contact" tag. It sounds like Avila is potentially going to follow his Josh Schertz, his former head coach at Indiana State, to his new position with the Saint Louis Billikens in the Atlantic-10.
If Avila does show up on campus in the next few days at Texas, then we know that the interest is real between the Longhorns and the All-MVC big man. We'll continue to follow Avila's portal recruitment for updates as they are reported in the coming days this weekend.