Florida guard Denzel Aberdeen plans to enter transfer portal
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Another player from the Florida Gators backcourt will enter the transfer portal. This time, it’s Denzel Aberdeen. On3’s Joe Tipton reported Friday that Aberdeen plans to enter the portal, per sources.
Aberdeen has one year of eligibility remaining after three seasons at UF.
Aberdeen is coming off his best season with the Gators in 2024-25, averaging career highs in points (7.7), assists (1.4) and rebounds (1.7). He made his first career start against Vanderbilt with Walter Clayton Jr. out, scoring 13 points.
It marked Aberdeen’s 65th career appearance. Since 1996, only Chris Richard had more games played when making his first start (in his 112th game).
Aberdeen then started the next four games with Alijah Martin nursing a hip pointer. He had back-to-back 20-point performances in wins over No. 22 Mississippi State and South Carolina, including a career-high 22 against the Gamecocks.
“Denzel is obviously playing at an insanely high level right now. His minutes are earned, and we expect him to continue to play at that level,” UF coach Todd Golden said after Aberdeen’s second straight 20-point game. “We have to remain unselfish. I think that’s going to be the biggest key to our success the rest of the way. It’s going to be a different guy every night. Some guys aren’t going to be playing as much as they want every night and we just can’t allow that to affect us big picture-wise in terms of our goals. If we can continue to channel how our team has been incredibly unselfish this year and be that way the rest of the way, it’ll prove to be very good for us. But it’s a daily challenge.”
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“It would be very easy for [Martin] after getting ready to come back to be like, ‘Ah, I need my starting spot.’ And he just wasn’t that way. He was very understanding of us staying with Denzel until Alijah gets fully back healthy, fully back acclimated. And when I had talked to him about it, he had an incredible attitude and was like, ‘Denzel deserves it, I’m ready when you need me.’ And I definitely don’t take that for granted because it says a lot about his maturity and his unselfishness, but that was an example of Alijah. I think all of our guys are really that way. They’ve been really good that way all year.”
Aberdeen would be the second Florida guard to enter the portal along with Kajus Kublickas. They will add Princeton transfer Xaivian Lee and incoming freshmen CJ Ingram and Alex Lloyd to the 2025-2026 roster, giving them up to 10 scholarship players at this time.
Also on Friday, Florida Gators power-forward Sam Alexis, who played in 24 games for the national champions last season, entered the transfer portal. Alexis, a 6-foot-8, 240-pound junior, just completed his junior season. It was his first with the Gators after transferring from Chattanooga. He averaged 4.7 points and 3.5 rebounds a game while making 46.5 percent of his field goals.
