There is still plenty of time in the college basketball transfer portal window and there will still be plenty of movement before the dust finally settles. However, on Thursday night as the Sweet 16 was still underway, UCLA head coach Mick Cronin scored one of the biggest wins of the offseason landing Mountain West Player of the Year Donovan Dent for his final season of eligibility.
BREAKING: New Mexico transfer guard Donovan Dent, one of the top players in the portal, has committed to UCLA, he tells @On3sports. Chose the Bruins over Kentucky and Gonzaga.
— Joe Tipton (@TiptonEdits) March 29, 2025
The 6-2 junior averaged 20.6 points and 6.4 assists per game this season. Shot 41% from three.… pic.twitter.com/9GwYYqAv3C
Donovan Dent commits to UCLA out of the transfer portal
The All-American honorable mention is a highly efficient scorer, impossible to keep out of the lane with his creative ball-handling and remarkable body control. The talented finisher averaged 20.4 points and 6.4 assists while shooting 49% from the field and over 40% from three for Richard Pitino’s New Mexico Lobos. At 6-foot-2 he may be the most talented returning point guard in the country with Purdue’s Braden Smith and incoming Iowa transfer Bennett Stirtz the only players with a viable argument.
Stirtz outperformed Dent in the NCAA Tournament as both point guards led their respective mid-major programs to first-round upsets, but instead of holding a portal sweepstakes, Stirtz followed head coach Ben McCollum from Drake to Iowa. Dent opted not to follow Pitino to Xavier, so he became the biggest portal prize so far, and it’s hard to imagine a bigger one this offseason.
With Kentucky, North Carolina, Gonzaga, and just about every other big-time program expressing interest, and a bit of a flirtation with Mark Pope’s Wildcats, it was a bit of a surprise to see Cronin land the superstar. With his Midwest proclivities, Cronin has always been a unique fit at UCLA, and with the shine of his 2021 Final Four run starting to wear off his job security has started to come into question.
Cronin is under contract through the 2027-28 season on an extension he signed in 2022, and he’s made two Sweet 16s and a Final Four in his six-year tenure, but he’s expressed constant frustration across the last two underwhelming seasons, is fed up with the cross-country travel that the new conference requires, and is still adjusting to the program’s new reality in the Big Ten. However, Dent is the type of player who can immediately reinvigorate a stale partnership and reenergize a fanbase.
Mick Cronin’s seat isn’t hot, but it has been warming up, so he responded with a massive portal addition. More work will be required this offseason to enter the year with a Big Ten title-winning roster, but adding Dent is a huge step in the right direction.