Skip to main content
Inside The Huskies

Finau Becomes 7th of 15 UW Recruits to Turn to Transfer Portal

The offensive lineman was one of the Huskies' highest rated recruits.
Dan Raley|
Finau Becomes 7th of 15 UW Recruits to Turn to Transfer Portal
Finau Becomes 7th of 15 UW Recruits to Turn to Transfer Portal

In this story:

Washington Huskies

Paki Finau, one of the centerpiece players for the last University of Washington recruiting class put together by Kalen DeBoer, has entered the transfer portal — the seventh of 15 players to go this route.

On Tuesday, the 6-foot-4, 265-pound offensive guard from Oak Hills High School in Hesperia, California, revealed his next move, which was reported by multiple recruiting sites.

It was hoped Finau, a 4-star recruit, would give the Huskies another mobile and aggressive player who could play practically every position up front on the order of Troy Fautanu.

He graded out higher than nearly every other 2024 UW player, ranking as the No. 11 interior offensive linemen and the 216th player overall  by 247sports.

One of the problems the Huskies have encountered in the wake of the coaching change from DeBoer to Jedd Fisch is the loss of popular offensive-line coach Scott Huff, now at Alabama, and subsequently several linemen.

All five starting UW offensive linemen from the College Football Playoff championship game, each with remaining eligibility, put themselves in a program exit mode once the season ended and the coaches changed over. 

Tackles Roger Rosengarten and Fautanu are entering the NFL draft, center Parker Brailsford is committed to Alabama, and guards Nate Kalepo and Julius Buelow are in the transfer portal, as are brothers and fellow interior linemen Geirean and Landen Hatchett.

Finau is so highly regarded, he fielded 26 scholarship offers, a list that includes Auburn, Penn State and Miami.

With so many veterans leaving all at once, the Huskies no doubt were hard-pressed to do everything they could to keep Finau in the fold. Had he stayed, he would have answered directly to Brennan Carroll, Pete's son and the UW's new offensive coordinator and offensive-line coach. 

Instead, he stands to play his college football elsewhere. 

Go to si.com/college/washington to read the latest Inside the Huskies stories — as soon as they’re published. Not all stories are posted on the fan sites.

Find Inside the Huskies on Facebook by searching: Inside Huskies/FanNation at SI.com or https://www.facebook.com/dan.raley.12

Follow Dan Raley of Inside the Huskies on Twitter: @DanRaley1 or @UWFanNation or @DanRaley3

Have a question, direct message me on Facebook or Twitter.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Loading recommendations... Please wait while we load personalized content recommendations

Published
Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

Home/Football