What Cade Orness entering the transfer portal means for Gonzaga basketball

The first domino has fallen for Mark Few and the Gonzaga Bulldogs in the 2026 offseason.

Cade Orness, a 6'3 guard from Poulsbo, WA, is planning to enter the transfer portal, according to his agent Ryan Murphy, who relayed the information to Tobias Bass of The Athletic.

Players cannot officially enter the portal until April 7 - the day after the national championship game - and have until April 21 to do so before the portal window closes.

Orness joined the team as a preferred walk-on ahead of the 2024-25 season, coming across the state from Poulsbo, where he was among the most prolific scorers in the state of Washington at North Kitsap. Orness competed against Davis Fogle in high school, even leading North Kitsap to a 66-54 win over Anacortes in the WIAA 2A playoffs. Orness dropped 24 points in the win, while Fogle had 33 of Anacortes' 54 points in the loss.

The 6'3 guard redshirted as a true freshman in 2024-25 - which is usually the case for walk-ons at Gonzaga - and he made his collegiate debut in GU's 2025-26 season opener, playing three minutes late in a 98-43 blowout win over Texas Southern on Nov. 3.

Orness scored his first points two weeks later in Gonzaga's program-record 72-point victory over Southern Utah on Nov. 17, playing three minutes and scoring two points on 1-1 shooting while recording one of Gonzaga's 18 steals on the night.

Orness then played his lone game against a power conference opponent on Nov. 25 in Gonzaga's 100-61 win over Maryland in the Players Era Festival, and scored his third and final point of the season on Dec. 7 against North Florida.

All told, the walk-on guard played 20 minutes across eight appearances with Gonzaga, scoring three points on 1-2 shooting from the field and 1-5 from the free throw line. He totaled one rebound, one assist, and one steal, along with three turnovers.

NEWS: Cade Orness (Gonzaga) plans to enter the transfer portal, his agent @Ryanmurphhoop tells @TheAthleticCBB pic.twitter.com/M5zqQYhmEY
— Tobias Bass (@tobias_bass) April 1, 2026

Tough future for walk-ons

The House Settlement changed college athletics permanently, with most of the attention going to the new rules allowing schools to directly pay student-athletes. However, a lesser discussed rule change is roster caps, which, for basketball, limits teams to just 15 total players.

Gonzaga has typically carried 16 or 17 players per season, with 3-4 walk-ons on the roster at any given time. Last year's team had 16 players, 14 who appeared on the court throughout the season and two, forward Parker Jefferson and guard Alonzo Metz, who redshirted.

With Gonzaga needing to drop the roster down to 15 for 2026-27, it seemed certain that some combination of Orness, Metz, and rising senior Joaquim ArauzMoore would lose their roster spot over the offseason.

Orness is the first domino to fall, but it would not be a surprise to see additional departures - walk-ons or otherwise - from this roster as portal season gets underway.

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