Villanova Transfer Portal Primer: Wildcats to Replace Five Starters

Villanova Men’s Basketball’s roster will look quite different in a matter of weeks, with each of their five regular starters this season, Eric Dixon, Wooga Poplar, Jhamir Brickus, Jordan Longino and Enoch Boakye out of collegiate eligibility.

The Wildcats will need to make a decision on former walk-on players Collin O’Toole (a senior with one year of eligibility remaining) and Wade Chiddick (a junior yet to make his collegiate debut). Villanova will have the ability to offer O’Toole and Chiddick full scholarships as the NCAA increases the scholarship limit to 15. If they decide not to spend on players with just a handful of collegiate minutes between them, that could encourage the pair to transfer elsewhere in pursuit of more playing time and compensation.

To complicate matters further, the Wildcats only have one player in their 2025 recruiting class, legacy commit Dante Allen. Even if young players like Tyler Perkins, Jordann Dumont and Kris Parker, who picked up bench minutes down the stretch this season, continue to progress and work their way into the starting lineup, Villanova will need to make use of the transfer portal to put their roster together.flesh out their roster.

The possibility remains that the Wildcats could lose players of their own to the portal, although it hasn’t happened yet… a surprising turn of events in the wake of Kyle Neptune’s firing.

Wildcats With Eligibility Remaining

Looking ahead to 2025-26, five guards (Parker, Perkins, O’Toole, Chiddick and Aleksandar Gavalyugov) and five forwards (Dumont, Josiah Moseley, Malcolm Thomas, Nnanna Njoku and Matthew Hodge) retain eligibility for Villanova. Allen gives the Wildcats an extra option at guard, making a minimum of four roster spots for Villanova to fill.

Thomas and Hodge, meanwhile, probably could’ve picked up playing time this season were it not for an injury and an eligibility issue, respectively.

Like O’Toole and Chiddick, Njoku might be a good candidate to transfer after a snakebitten Wildcats tenure that included a trio of season-altering injuries.

While their young players possess plenty of talent, Villanova needs depth, especially at guard, in order to negate any growing pains. The Wildcats’ coaching search will impact their ability to attack the transfer portal, not yet knowing what type of roster their next head coach will want to construct, so they’re fighting against the clock. With the portal already open and little motion on the coaching search so far, the Wildcats may need to scramble in order to fill the last four spots on their roster (assuming no one else transfers away).