Yesterday the Tar Heels lost former five-star point guard Elliot Cadeau to the transfer portal, opening up a scholarship for the team to pursue in the transfer portal, where they’ve been very active early, contacting UVA transfer Isaac McKneely, and Indiana transfer Malik Reneau in the first two days of the portal being open. According to Tar Heel Illustrated, Carolina has also been in contact with Donovan Dent, a transfer from New Mexico, who averaged over 20 points per game, on his way to being named the Mountain West Player of the Year, and led the Lobos to Round of 32 of the NCAA Tournament.
Hubert Davis and Jim Tanner have been very selective in the players they are targeting early on this transfer portal cycle, going after productive players that have the size to play at the power conference level. While Dent’s production was at the mid-major level, the Mountain West has been a highly competitive conference over the last couple of seasons, but at 6-2, he has the size to transfer that success to the power conference level.
Dent’s junior season has been his best so far, but he also put together a productive sophomore season, where he averaged 14.1 points and 5.4 assists and shot 38% from behind the arc, meaning that the production we saw during his junior season wasn’t a fluke.
Dent is going to be one of the gems of this transfer portal cycle, so Carolina will have their work cut out for them if they hope to land his services in Chapel Hill. Dent’s head coach, Richard Pitino, was just hired as the next head coach at Xavier, so following him to the Big East is on the table, in addition to a possible return back to New Mexico. There is a void for a natural scorer on the roster, with the graduation of RJ Davis, and even more so with the departure of Elliot Cadeau, who wasn’t built to score the ball, the way that Dent can score it, and the way this offense needs its lead guard to do som for it to run at optimum efficiency.
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