Stanford basketball’s season wrapped in March, where a loss to Kent State in the NIT ended their campaign. Since then, head coach Kyle Smith and the coaching staff had two months to replace their talent that they lost via the NBA Draft, graduation, or transfer.
The Cardinal lost five players. Most notably, Maxime Raynaud, who was out of eligibility and went to the Draft, where he looks to be a late first or early second round selection.
Jaylen Blakes and Cole Kastner both signed with Stanford for a final graduate transfer year, which eventually ended this offseason. Finally, Oziyah Sellers and Derin Saran elected to enter the transfer portal, where Sellers landed with St. John’s, and Saran went back to UC Irvine.
Stanford has lost a lot of talent, but they arguably brought it similar talent that coach Smith can work with for the 2025-26 campaign.
Through the recruiting process, the Cardinal picked up Ebuka Okorie from Brewster Academy, a four star recruit (247 sports), and a top two player on a national semifinalist. They added Kristers Skrinda, a four star recruit (Rivals) who was a top player in Latvia.
Finally, after Richard Pitino accepted a job at Xavier, New Mexico commit Jaylen Petty (four star per 247 sports) de-committed and landed on the farm.
To add on to a solid recruiting class, Stanford picked up two transfers. First, they acquired Jeremy-Dent Smith from Cal State Dominguez Hills, the top player on a national championship finalist at the DII level.
A few weeks later, they added AJ Rohosy, a former player of Coach Smith at Washington State who played his most recent season for Claremont-Mudd-Scripps at the DIII level, where he was an All-American.
Stanford definitely lost some star power, but made it up by bringing in some great depth acquisitions. Although the five for five swap may not be ideal considering that Raynaud averaged a double-double and is NBA bound, Stanford boasted six freshmen last season, and a number of those players will surely improve.
How much they improve and how well this group gels will determine how good of a season Stanford ends up having.
Kyle Smith has done a great job bringing in new talent, and has demonstrated over the offseason that Stanford will be one of the deeper teams in college basketball next season.
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