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PROVO — The ongoing soap opera of the BYU basketball team's offseason took another turn Thursday.
Senior wing Gideon George has withdrawn his name from the NCAA transfer portal, as first reported by On3's Matt Zenitz early Thursday afternoon. The senior from Minna, Nigeria, will likely return to BYU basketball, if he doesn't turn pro, a source confirmed to KSL.com.
It's the latest installment in the saga of George — and the BYU basketball team — that has seen the roster reshuffle in recent days amid a deluge of offseason news. After assistant coach Chris Burgess reached an agreement to return to his alma mater and join Craig Smith's staff at Utah, the Cougars' roster, in some ways, flooded the portal.
As many as five players from the Provo-based school were in the portal at one point, headlined by starting forward Caleb Lohner, graduating senior Gavin Baxter, guards Hunter Erickson and Nate Hansen, and walk-on Nate DowDell. George also put his name in the portal briefly after he had previously announced that he was declaring for the NBA draft without hiring an agent, maintaining his final season of collegiate eligibility while also testing out his pro prospects.
George even went so far as to tweet a goodbye message to BYU fans, saying that "after a lot of thought and prayer, I have decided that my time at BYU has come to an end."
"It has been an incredible experience and my time at BYU has changed my life, but God has other plans for me now," George added. "I am forever grateful to Coach Pope, Chris Burgess, Nick Robinson, Cody Fueger, Bobby Horodyski and the rest of the incredible BYU staff. You and the rest of Cougar Nation treated me like family and I will never be able to repay you for what you have done for me."
That message, shared Tuesday, was deleted sometime Wednesday night or Thursday morning. Time has a way of changing plans, even rather quickly in a world of college basketball where more than 1,250 scholarship players are currently in the transfer portal, per Stadium's Jeff Goodman.
💙💙🤙🏿🤙🏿 pic.twitter.com/RDY3T2mkWr
— Gideon George (@GideonOmohkudu) April 21, 2022
All this just a few days after Spencer Johnson, one of the soon-to-be senior leaders on the 2022-23 BYU basketball team, posted a response to the past few days on his Instagram page — one that was also liked by fellow senior-to-be Seneca Knight.
"A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor," wrote Johnson, whose brother Isaac recently transferred from Oregon to Utah State. "Just want everyone to know that I believe in my teammates and in this coaching staff. I believe that we are going to win here at BYU and we are going to be incredibly successful!
"We work too hard and have too much support around us to not be successful. We are going to go all in. So stay positive and keep believing. We have big things ahead!!"
Another message George did not delete was a separate tweet Tuesday wherein he thanked Lohner, a close friend on the team for the past two years, and called him a "hell of a teammate." He then added a tweet Thursday that simply stated "finishing what we started," with BYU-themed blue hearts and shaka emojis, strongly implying that the 6-foot-6, 210-pound senior wing who averaged 8.8 points, 5.0 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game will return to BYU for his second senior year.
Earlier Thursday, it was also reported by BYU blog Vanquish the Foe that the Cougars would host four-star big man Fredrick King for an official visit. The four-star forward by Rivals and On3 who most recently prepped at the NBA's Latin American Academy in Mexico previously signed with Louisville back in November, but was released from his national letter of intent after the Cardinals' coaching change.
BYU was also set to host former Detroit Mercy star Antoine Davis, one of the top scorers in college basketball last year who averaged 24.6 points and 4.3 assists on 41% shooting. Davis is also considering Maryland, Kansas State, Georgetown and Cincinnati, according to college basketball reporter Jon Rothstein.
