UCF Men's Hoops Lands Oklahoma State Transfer
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The UCF Knights Men's Basketball team made a late addition from the transfer portal in former Oklahoma State guard Arturo Dean, Knights247 reported Wednesday night.
Dean acknowledged the move on social media on Thursday. The move comes over five months after he entered the transfer portal on April 19 and a week and a half after UCF officially began practices for the 2025-26 season.
Dean started 21 of the 37 games he played for the Cowboys last season, his only one in Stillwater. He averaged 7.6 points and 3.1 rebounds, went 64-93 from the free-throw line and recorded 116 assists. He also recorded 84 steals, just one more than UCF's own Darius Johnson, ranking sixth in the nation and leading the Big 12.
"Arturo is a great young man from a great family and has been well-coached along the way," Oklahoma State coach Steve Lutz said of Dean on the player's profile page. "He takes tremendous pride in his defense, which isn't often the case with young players."
Dean arrived in Stillwater after two years at Florida International in his hometown of Miami. He was named Conference USA's Freshman of the Year and followed that up by leading the nation with 104 steals as a sophomore.
Dean does not have long to get up to speed with the Knights, as they travel to face Duke in an exhibition game on Oct. 21 and have their regular-season opener in just over a month on Nov. 3 against Hofstra. The Knights also have a pair of conference matchups against Dean's old team, Oklahoma State, first visiting Stillwater on Jan. 6, then welcoming the Cowboys to Orlando on March 3.
Four-Star Guard Commits To UCF
The UCF Knights Men's Basketball team gained a verbal commitment from shooting guard Christian Gibson on Sept. 20, according to a post from Gibson on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The announcement came one day after Gibson's official visit to campus, one of only two official visits he had scheduled with the other being to St. Louis set for Oct. 9. He was one of three four-star recruits that scheduled official visits to Orlando in September, but he was the only one that ended up committing to the Knights.
Gibson is rated as a four-star by 247Sports. His 247Sports composite score, 0.9768, would make him the second-highest rated recruit in Knights history, only coming behind the now-Cincinnati Bearcat Moustapha Thiam last season.
Gibson also ranks No. 58 overall on the ESPN100 list, a Top 10 shooting guard of the 2026 class, and the second-highest rated prospect out of the state of Tennessee.
He is coming off a Nike Elite Youth Basketball League in which he averaged 21.5 points per game and 5.5 rebounds per game. He also recorded 14 steals, 26 assists and 46 of 57 from the free-throw line in his 14 games of action.
A native of Houston, Texas, Gibson stayed in his hometown for his first three seasons of high school basketball at Mayde Creek High School, but transferred to Tennessee Collegiate Academy in July.
Tennessee Collegiate Academy is heading into its first season in the Nike EYBL Scholastic League alongside Central Florida-based Montverde Academy. It actually bookends its regular season with trips to Montverde, first playing in the Sunshine Classic hosted there to begin its season from Dec. 5-7 and then returning to face Montverde Academy itself on Feb. 27.
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Bryson Turner is a sports journalist who covers UCF Athletics. Turner has contributed to the Black and Gold Banneret, the home for UCF Athletics on SB Nation. He has called the Orlando area home since the age of 8 and received his bachelor's and master's degrees from UCF.
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