When Delaware point guard Izaiah Pasha entered the NCAA transfer portal, he didn’t have a price tag in mind or an expectation of what level of schools might recruit him. But after a breakout season that netted him CAA Rookie of the Year honors, Pasha figured it couldn’t hurt to find out.
“The moment I entered the portal, it just went crazy,” Pasha told Hoops HQ. “I was like, ‘Well, there ain’t no point in me going back.’”
Pasha initially considered Gonzaga, Texas Tech and Penn State, but the Zags quickly filled their point guard spot and Pasha didn’t feel like the Red Raiders truly had a high level of interest in him. He said he was turning his focus to Penn State when two other programs upped their efforts to land him — Virginia Tech and Wake Forest. “They came back in the picture and they came in really aggressive,” Pasha said.
The 6-foot-4, 190-pounder, who was a combo guard in high school, scheduled visits to both. But the Hokies and coach Mike Young made sure he never made it to Winston Salem, N.C., securing his commitment before he left Blacksburg. “They were basically talking to my agent and asking him and telling me, ‘What do we have to do so you don’t take this visit to Wake Forest?’” Pasha said. “Just by them saying that, that just spoke for itself. Like, they really want you. Want and need you. That’s where you have to go.”
Indeed, Young had a number of needs for his 2025-26 roster, though not as dire a spot as a year earlier when eight of the Hokies’ top nine scorers from 2023-24 departed, five by way of the transfer portal. Tech finished 13-19, Young’s first losing season in six years at the school, and offensive struggles shouldered much of the blame. The Hokies scored 69.2 points per game, second fewest in the ACC. Their turnover margin and assist-to-turnover ratio were also the second worst in the league.
The rebuilt roster was short on talent and chemistry, a situation complicated when the transfer point guard Young brought in was dismissed before the start of the season because he was caught up in a gambling scandal at his former school.
The Top 50 Players in the Transfer Portal
UPDATED April 24, 2025: Boogie Fland was a last-minute addition to the portal before it closed on Tuesday. And he enters our updated Top 50 rankings.
Now, Young appears to have Tech in a better position. A year after getting gobsmacked by the modern era, Young and Tech are managing by all means available. He has retained some key pieces from last year’s club, including Ben Hammond, Jaden Schutt and Tyler Johnson. Tobi Lawal, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, is testing the NBA Draft waters but told Hoops HQ he expects to be back with the Hokies in 2025-26.
“I don’t think I’m ready, but I kind of judge myself much more harshly than other people,” Lawal said. “So I want to see what everyone else will say. The plan is just to come back to Tech, keep getting better and have a great season.”
Lawal, Hammond, Schutt and Johnson combined to score 32.4 points per game last season.
Young also has a pair of transfers committed in Pasha and West Virginia forward Amani Hansberry, an international recruit in German center Antonio Dorn and two incoming freshmen.
Lawal said having a returning core along with the significant additions has the team in a good position going into the year. “We have more guys coming back,” Lawal said. “It helps us to have a foundation of people who understand how coach young wants to play and how we want to play in the season to come. That definitely helps.”
As he worked to coax Hansberry to join him at Virginia Tech, Hammond, a sophomore point guard, used as straightforward a pitch as possible. “I just said I’ll get him the ball,” Hammond said. “Everybody wants the ball. Everybody wants to score.”
For his part, Hammond said he never considered leaving Blacksburg this offseason.
“I always thought about coming back to Virginia Tech,” he said. “I felt like the job wasn’t finished, for sure. I felt like I could have done a lot more for this program. There was nothing on my mind about transferring or leaving, anything like that. It was all focused on getting better.”
Hammond said the coaching staff approached him “late in the season” to gauge his intentions.
“They understand what today’s world is like with people entering the portal,” he said. “People going to three schools in three years. Stuff like that. They waited until the end of the year to have conversations about that. They just let me know that they wanted me back. And I told them right away that I wanted to be back here. So, it was a pretty easy process. Nothing about re-recruiting me. We were both on the same page.”
Hammond said schools reached out to his trainers to attempt to entice him into the portal, but once he announced his plans, he hasn’t been contacted.
For Pasha, the buzz from schools encouraging him to enter the portal contributed to his decision to put his name in and gauge what level of interest he might attract. He said NIL money wasn’t the main factor — he was looking for the opportunity to position himself to make it to the NBA.
Pasha also directed his agent not to pursue schools — Pasha wanted to know who was really interested in him.
“I told my agent, I don’t want you approaching schools and asking for a number,” Pasha said. “I don’t want you hitting up schools for me. Let them come.”
And Virginia Tech did.
