Texas Can Build Around High-Profile Transfer Max Abmas
One of the highest-profile names in the transfer portal picked Texas on Thursday night, with Oral Roberts transfer guard Max Abmas, a Texas native, announcing his commitment to join Rodney Terry and the Longhorns. Abmas is most known for leading Oral Roberts to the Sweet 16 in 2021, when he scored 25 points in three straight NCAA tournament games to become one of the stars of March.
There’s no question Abmas has his limitations. He graded out as a poor defender at Oral Roberts, and consistently having to defend bigger, more athletic guards in the Big 12 could cause even more problems on that end of the floor. Abmas has also had the benefit of playing in a system with elite floor spacing, which has given him more room to operate in ball screens and helped him gain advantages off the bounce. As of now, the Texas roster severely lacks shooting: Abmas’s likely backcourt running mate, Tyrese Hunter, shot 34% from deep last season. And there’s a good chance the Longhorns will play some two-big looks with Dylan Disu and Virginia transfer Kadin Shedrick on the floor together.
Plus, since his electric showing in the 2021 Big Dance, Abmas has struggled some in games against high-major competition. He was held to just three points on 1-of-13 shooting against Houston early in the ’22–23 season, and Duke limited him to 12 points on 15 shots and five turnovers in the NCAA tournament this year. Even in more productive games, like a 20-point showing against TCU in the ’21–22 season, it took Abmas 21 shots to get to that threshold.
Still, it was a necessity for Texas to address the point guard position this offseason, and Abmas was as good as any available guard in the portal. He was the heartbeat of a Sweet 16 team in 2021 and a 30-win team in ’23. He has scored 2,500 points in college for a reason, and his Oral Roberts coach Paul Mills raved this season about Abmas’s growth playing in a more traditional ball-screen offense after struggles in that setting at the NBA draft combine in ’21. He was the No. 2 transfer in Sports Illustrated’s best available rankings released earlier this week. As proven backcourt options go, he’s at the top of the list.
Plus, Abmas has been universally lauded as a positive locker-room presence and leader. He returned to Oral Roberts each of the past two seasons despite rampant poaching attempts from power programs (“We’ve got DMs. He’s screenshotted [his] DMs. We’re not naive,” Mills said in March.) to help the program build on that run to the Sweet 16, and hit the portal only now after Mills left for Wichita State. He was a premed student at Oral Roberts and is set to graduate this spring with between a 3.7 and 3.8 GPA. His combination of top-end talent and being a strong culture addition makes him an ideal piece for Terry to build his 2023–24 roster.
The Abmas commitment also puts a cap on a much-needed week of good news for Texas, which had been navigating a choppy offseason thus far for the Longhorns. Even after Terry was rewarded with a five-year contract to officially replace Chris Beard, Texas got off to a slow start, failing to land a single transfer commitment in the first month of the portal. Meanwhile, freshmen Arterio Morris and Rowan Brumbaugh hit the portal despite being pegged for rotation minutes in 2023–24. Plus, five-star 2023 signee AJ Johnson spurned the Longhorns for a professional contract in Australia. Fellow five-star Ron Holland announced Friday he is decommitting from the school, though still considering the Longhorns. All this has exacerbated what already looked like a busy offseason, with seniors Marcus Carr, Timmy Allen, Sir’Jabari Rice and Christian Bishop set to graduate.
But in the last week, Disu announced his return for a fifth year, Shedrick committed to Texas over big-name suitors like Duke, Missouri and Xavier, and, now Abmas gives the Longhorns a big-name point guard to run its team in 2023–24. Assuming Hunter withdraws from the NBA draft, a nucleus of Abmas, Hunter, Disu and Shedrick has top-25 potential. Plus, the Longhorns still have several scholarships available to further bolster this roster as they gear up to contend in the loaded Big 12 in ’23–24. The Holland and Johnson decommitments leave the Longhorns in need of a few more quality pieces to round out this rotation, but Abmas helps establish a competitive core for these new-look Longhorns.
Abmas’s other most likely suitor was Kansas State, which hosted Abmas on an official visit earlier this month as it looks to capitalize on the momentum of this past season’s trip to the Elite Eight. The Wildcats are still in the mix for North Texas transfer guard Tylor Perry, another of the most sought-after transfers in the class, as they hunt for a replacement for star guard Markquis Nowell, whose electrifying play helped Jerome Tang’s team make that deep March run.
The focus now for Texas shifts to adding shooting around Abmas. Oral Roberts ranked in the top 50 nationally in both three-point percentage and three-point rate (percentage of shots that are threes) in each of the last three years. Meanwhile, Texas ranked No. 267 nationally in three-point rate and shot a pedestrian 34.7% from distance this season. Adding a knockdown shooter or two could unlock Abmas’s game and allow him to blossom into one of the better guards in the Big 12.
