Dante Harris Transfers to the University of Virginia

Harris heads to play for Tony Bennett and the Cavaliers as he looks to get his collegiate career back on track after a bumpy sophomore season at Georgetown.

Former Georgetown point guard Dante Harris announced his decision to transfer to the University of Virginia on Saturday afternoon. Harris, who won the Big East Tournament Most Outstanding Player award in 2021 during Georgetown’s conference tournament championship run, averaged 11.9 points, 3.6 rebounds, and 4.1 assists per game last year as a sophomore at Georgetown.

Georgetown, who sits at 5-7 this season, brought in Primo Spears this offseason as its new starting point guard, after a disappointing sophomore season for Harris. The move to bring in Spears was a key reason for Harris transferring out of the program.

Spears is averaging 17.6 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 4.6 assists per game. His advanced statistics are less notable, however, with Spears being seventh on the team in offensive rating, tenth in defensive rating, and eleventh on the team in effective field goal percentage (47.1%).

This marks the second straight year that Patrick Ewing has had a key player from his 2021 Big East champion squad transfer to another school in the surrounding area, with Qudus Wahab transferring to Maryland being the other case.

That Tony Bennett— a two-time Naismith College Coach of the Year award winner, who has a career record of 324-118 (.733), one national championship, and two ACC championships under his belt— thought that Harris could be a useful addition to his roster runs counter to the opinion of Ewing, who thought he needed to upgrade over Harris this offseason, instead of upgrading the talent around Harris instead.

Time will tell which coach was right on Harris, but conventional wisdom would suggest siding with the coach who has a .733 W-L record and a national championship at UVA, instead of the coach with a .445 record and a fluke Big East Tournament championship at Georgetown.

For Ewing, the transfer of Harris is just another mark against the embattled head coach for his poor track record of maintaining roster continuity as head coach at Georgetown.

The departure of Harris has led to Ewing essentially going without a backup point guard this season, with Primo Spears instead averaging 37.8 minutes per game— most on the team— and freshman guard Denver Anglin, a former four-star recruit, barely seeing the floor.