Texas’ transfers earn Steve Sarkisian's praise following their first practice as Longhorns

Steve Sarkisian‘s program had 25 players new to the 40 Acres take to the practice fields in burnt orange and white for the first time on Tuesday with seven of them coming from the transfer portal.

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With all those new faces via the imPorted player ranks, Sarkisian was pleased with what he saw from those stepping onto the Frank Denius Fields for the first time on Tuesday in an official practice.

“This was a pretty good starting point for us,” Sarkisian said. “You could tell the guys have been in their playbooks and studying.”

Learning all the ins and outs of a new place, specifically a new university, is no easy task. A few months ago, players like Clemson safety transfer Andrew Mukuba and Alabama wideout transfer Isaiah Bond had to learn where they needed to go for classes related to their Physical Culture and Sport major. On Tuesday, they had to make sure they went from drill to drill and landmark to landmark at the right time with the right people.

For as simple as it sounds, that’s not always an easy thing to maneuver.

“Just getting them to go the right way,” Sarkisian said when speaking about challenges with new players. “You go out to practice the first time and you just hope guys are where they’re supposed to be. We’ve got a lot of moving parts when we practice. I’m not one where I like guys standing around. Generally, when we’re working one drill over here, we’ve got three other drills going on at the same time. A lot of times, a new face can get lost and be at the wrong place at the wrong time and then he’s not getting those reps to do what he needs to do.

“That goes back to when they first get here in school. You just try to get them going in the right direction, take them on the necessary steps, get them to where they’re supposed to be off the field, and then try to get them to be where they’re supposed to be on the field. That lends itself into their play and being where they’re supposed to be play to play to play and doing what they’re supposed to do.”

With transfers, seven of whom are already on campus and the eighth, Silas Bolden, set to enroll in May, making sure they fit on the field is one thing. Making sure they fit into the locker room and the culture Texas has established entering Sarkisian’s fourth season? An even more difficult accomplishment.

For Sarkisian, he described that part as the “biggest challenge of the transfer portal.”

“These guys go in the portal and sometimes four days later they’re on your campus on an official visit,” Sarkisian said. “We really have to be diligent in our process of getting to know them, tapping into the right people who have worked with them whether it was high school coach, trainers, or sometimes their own coach from the school they’re coming from to make sure they can fit in our culture, that they will thrive in our culture. We just don’t want somebody that’s just going to survive. We want people that are really going to thrive in this environment. So far, a couple months into this thing with these guys being here, it seems really good.”

Sarkisian relayed tidbits about a few of those seven on-campus transfers.

Regarding Mukuba, who the Texas head coach described as awesome, Sarkisian added “he’s wired really well. He’s a great team guy.”

When speaking about Bond and former Crimson Tide tight end Amari Niblack, Sarkisian said they’ve been “really, really good.”

UTSA EDGE transfer Trey Moore was said by Sarkisian to be “unbelievable in what he’s brought.”

Houston wide receiver imPort Matthew Golden was someone Sarkisian said he was “very confident and very comfortable with” after recruiting him out of Klein (Texas) Cain.

“He had been on campus,” Sarkisian said. “We had been around him, been around his mom. That process was really easy.”

Talking about former Alabama linebacker Kendrick Blackshire, Sarkisian said “(Jeff) Banks had recruited him so hard in high school that we had a very good understanding of him coming out.”

Referencing Tia Savea, Sarkisian spoke highly of the experience he had not just at Arizona but also at UCLA.

Even Bolden, who Sarkisian didn’t have a ton of knowledge about once he entered the portal and who will join the program in the summer, earned praise. Sarkisian credited a relationship with former Oregon State and current Michigan State head coach Jonathan Smith that gave Bolden a burnt orange stamp of approval.

“You could tell the good nature of the young man and what he was made up of,” Sarkisian said.

Sarkisian was quick to credit the recruiting staff for ensuring these new transfer additions fit what he was looking for in a program. For the Longhorns, Sarkisian hopes that the good to great player they got from the portal can become an even better version of themselves in Austin.

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“You never know,” Sarkisian said. “What a guy was at one place, maybe we can even get a better version of him here.”