The transfer portal window for men’s basketball closed last night at 12:00 AM. Sometime before the clock struck midnight, MSU guard Divine Ugochukwu decided to drop his name into the portal, per a report on On3. Ugo played for MSU for one injury-shortened season after spending his freshman season with the Miami Hurricanes.
In his lone campaign as a Spartan, he played in 21 games and got the start at shooting guard in 11 of those. He finished with a 5.1 PPG average along with 1.5 in both RPG and APG.
While most of his games ended with single-digit scoring outputs, he did reach 10 or more a few times including a season-high 23-point performance in our win at Penn State back in December which included going 5-5 from downtown.
The fact that someone from last year’s roster has gone to the portal, particularly one of our backcourt players, would not have come as much of a surprise when the window first opened two weeks ago. What feels strange about this was that Divine waited until the 11th hour to make his decision. I have to wonder if he was hoping that one of his teammates (i.e. Kur Teng) would leave for the portal first; maybe it was a game of portal chicken and Teng held on longer. The risk he took in waiting until now is that many of the other teams around the country, especially the power conference programs, have already picked away at the pool of players in the portal. I can only assume that Divine could have had more potential interest from other schools had he entered his name earlier.
As to how this impacts Michigan State in 2025-26, Divine’s exit does help reduce some of the logjam that Tom Izzo has in the backcourt and wing positions. In TOC’s initial projection of next year’s rotation, we slotted Ugochukwu in as a starter next to Jeremy Fears with Teng and incoming freshman Jasiah Jervis as the backups. As mentioned in that article, this was the competition that the TOC writers disagreed on most; Teng and Jervis each had at least one vote to be named the starting shooting guard.
Now we must make a new guess as to what Coach Izzo will do. That article will come out tomorrow.
What do you think of Ugo’s departure and the timing of it? How much do you think this will hurt next year’s ceiling? Let us hear your reactions in the comments.
