Kansas men’s basketball center Ernest Udeh Jr. decides to enter the transfer portal
LAWRENCE — Ernest Udeh Jr. is the latest Kansas men’s basketball player to decide to continue his collegiate career elsewhere.
Udeh has decided to enter the transfer portal, he confirmed Thursday with a social media post on Twitter. Udeh, a freshman center this past season, is the second of the Jayhawks’ bigs to make that decision following the commitment of Michigan transfer and center Hunter Dickinson. And with Udeh’s departure, that makes it eight Kansas players who have chosen to transfer and play for another program next season.
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The other seven players who’ve decided to enter the transfer portal following the Jayhawks’ season are freshman forward Zuby Ejiofor, redshirt freshman guard Kyle Cuffe Jr., sophomore guard Bobby Pettiford Jr., junior guard Joseph Yesufu, freshman guard MJ Rice, sophomore forward Zach Clemence and super-senior forward Cam Martin. Ejiofor and Cuffe are the two most recent and the only two, besides Udeh now, to not have revealed where they’ll play next. That means the only two scholarship returnees from this past season for Kansas are set to be a couple of starters in forward KJ Adams Jr. and guard Dajuan Harris Jr.
Udeh is a former 247Sports Composite four-star prospect and McDonald’s All-American. He averaged 8.3 minutes per game in his 30 appearances off the bench for a team that won a Big 12 Conference regular season title and earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Although he averaged just 2.6 points and 1.8 rebounds per game, his defensive prowess was valuable and he was poised for a greater role with the Jayhawks next season.
Of the players to leave Kansas this offseason, Udeh’s decision to go is arguably the one that negatively affects the Jayhawks the most. It upped the number of open scholarship spots ahead of the 2023-24 campaign to three, at least as of Thursday morning. The commitment decision of 247Sports Composite five-star power forward Mackenzie Mgbako, who’s in the 2023 class, was looming Friday when Udeh decided to enter the portal.
Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: KU basketball's Ernest Udeh Jr. decides to enter the transfer portal
