Well, Wednesday has become a good news-bad news day for the Virginia Cavaliers men’s basketball program. After landing high school recruit Silas Barksdale in the late afternoon, UVA is losing rising senior power forward Elijah Saunders who is entering the transfer portal after one year in Charlottesville.

Saunders came to Virginia after two seasons at San Diego State. He had an up and down season, but finished second on the team in scoring (10.4 points per game) and rebounding (5.0 rebounds per game). He also shot 34.7% from three as a floor spacer at the four spot.

Saunders is the ninth Wahoo to enter the transfer portal, joining Dai Dai Ames (Cal commit), Blake Buchanan (Iowa State), Isaac McKneely, Andrew Rohde, Jacob Cofie, Ishan Sharma, Anthony Robinson, and TJ Power.

That leaves just Elijah Gertrude – who missed last season due to an injury – as the only (currently) returning scholarship player. There is also preferred walk-on Carter Lang who transferred from Vanderbilt last offseason. With Gertrude, Lang, Barksdale, and Chance Mallory, UVA has essentially four D-1 caliber players on its roster right now. They’ve played a combined 420 minutes of college basketball.

As for Saunders, my understanding is that he wanted to be at UVA and this is more a matter of Ryan Odom and his staff looking for a fresh start at assembling a roster. There’s always a chance that he returns. But the fact that Saunders is entering the portal over a week and a half after Odom was hired suggests such a reunion would be unlikely.

That approach is a risky one for this new staff given how the team currently has zero known commodities on its roster. Nick Davidson committing to Clemson this afternoon was a tough transfer recruiting loss. Then again, Odom aiming to build a program on his terms suggests his confidence in his ability to do so. Now, he’ll likely aim to add a few players from his team at VCU before hitting the portal hard after the dead period.