Huskies Add a Guard, Lose One, to the Transfer Portal

Where have we heard this before: the University of Washington basketball team has pulled a player out of the transfer portal from a Texas school who received freshman accolades and originally comes from Gilbert, Arizona.

Last year, it was Nate Calmese.

This week, it's Mekhi Mason.

For the UW's sake, here's hoping new Husky coach Danny Sprinkle has much better luck with this basketball equation than the fired Mike Hopkins., who chose to sit Calmese and not use the talents of the 2023 Southland Conference Freshman of the Year from Lamar.

Interestingly, within an hour of news circulating on Wednesday that the 6-foot-5 Mason was UW-bound from Rice - becoming Sprinkle's first Husky recruit -- the 6-foot-2 Calmese, according to reports, entered his name in the transfer portal a second time.

In Mason, the Huskies pick up a shooting guard who averaged 14 points, 4 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game as a sophomore for an 11-21 team that dropped its final five games of the season. He shot 39.3 from the field, 34.3 from 3-point range. He had a career-best 30 points on 11-for-19 shooting in an 80-76 victory at USTA in early February.

Mason previously earned a spot on the 2023 Conference USA All-Freshman Team by averaging 9.9 points, 3.1 rebounds and 1.9 assists per outing.

He started all 68 games while at Rice, which finished 19-16 and appeared in the CBI Tournament when he was a freshman.

Calmese went from a 17.6 scorer playing 31.4 minutes per game at Lamar to a 4.1 scorer who appeared in just 16 games for the 17-15 Huskies. He provided 15 20-point outings or more at his previous stop, with a high game of 32. For the UW, he reached double figures just three times, with 15 at Arizona his season high.

He played for Mesquite High School in Gilbert, a suburb southeast of Phoenix, while Mason competed for Compass Prep School.

Well before the Pac-12 Tournament and Hopkins' firing, Calmese expressed his disappointment with his UW playing experience and made it fairly clear he would consider leaving.

"I'm definitely going to look at all my options, but this is obviously the first one because I'm here and I love the environment here in Seattle," he said. "But I'm obviously going to explore all my options."

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