The advent of the NCAA transfer portal affords the opportunity for programs to fix recruiting misses or missed evaluations and TCU Horned Frogs transfer forward David Punch represents both for the Texas Longhorns in making a big pledge to head coach Sean Miller and his staff on Sunday on a visit to the Forty Acres.<\/p>\n
Punch has two seasons of eligibility remaining and is ranked as the No. 7 player overall and the No. 1 power forward in the NCAA transfer portal.<\/p>\n
The 6\u20197, 246-pounder from Harker Heights entered the portal on Thursday with a \u201cdo not contact\u201d tag that typically indicates a player\u2019s next destination is already determined. And it was as the Longhorns secured two major weekend pledges from Punch and former Colorado guard Isaiah Johnson<\/a> after retaining<\/a> rising junior center Matas Vokietaitis on Friday.<\/p>\n Under former head coach Rodney Terry, Texas wasn\u2019t one of the 19 programs to offer Punch when he was a consensus four-star prospect in the 2024 recruiting class, but Miller did offer Punch at Xavier, securing an official visit from the nation\u2019s No. 21 power forward in the 247Sports Composite rankings before losing out to TCU.<\/p>\n In making 27 starts for the Horned Frogs in 33 games as a freshman, Punch was a role player who averaged 6.5 points and 4.4 rebounds per game before emerging as an impact player as TCU made the second round of the NCAA Tournament this season, increasing his scoring to 14.1 points per game and his rebounding to 6.8 per game.<\/p>\n Punch also became a better free-throw shooter, though he still wasn\u2019t particularly efficient at 65.3 percent, and his promising three-point shooting from high school hasn\u2019t yet translated either, but he did shoot 44.8 percent from mid range, is a strong defensive rebounder and shot blocker, and had 34 dunks as a sophomore.<\/p>\n Working from the perimeter, Punch is a good fit next to Vokietaitis because of his ability to run high-low actions and allow Vokietaitis to work from the dunker spot as Punch operates as another pick-and-roll option who can pass effectively out of the short roll.<\/p>\n When Vokietaitis is out of the game, Punch can provide a strong post presence who can get into the paint off the bounce or work with his back to the basket as the type of secondary option in that area that the Longhorns didn\u2019t have last season.<\/p>\n As a finisher, Punch can operate through contact with physicality and apparent length that allows him to play bigger than his listed 6\u20197 height.<\/p>\n Dailyn Swain\u2019s declaration for the 2026 NBA Draft leaves Texas with remaining needs on the wing and backup depth at guard and in the froncourt, but the Miller and his staff have executed their roster construction at a high level in the last several days to put the pieces together for increased upside next season compared to the team that just made the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The advent of the NCAA transfer portal affords the opportunity for programs to fix recruiting misses or missed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,13558,13559,28],"class_list":["post-247093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-longhorns-basketball","tag-texas-longhorns-basketball-recruiting","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}